Railways on Friday clarified that there is no proposal to discontinue Garib Rath services.
Amid reports appearing in media that the Government was considering to ‘discontinue Garib Rath’, the Railways clarified that owing to temporary shortage of coaches on Northern Railway, two pairs of weekly trains of Garib Rath services namely Train No 12207/08 between Kathgodam and Jammu Tawi and train no 12209/10 between Kanpur and Kathgodam were temporarily operated as Express train services by Northern Railway.
There are 26 pairs of Garib Rath services operating on Railways and these are very popular services as they facilitate air-conditioned travel at fares which are lower than the normal AC-3 tier fares, the Railway Ministry tweeted. However, the Garib Rath services on these two sectors are also being restored from August 4, 2019.
The Garib Rath was started by the Indian Railways in 2005 to provide subsidized price air-conditioned long-distance travel to passengers who could not afford standard fares of air-conditioned class in regular-fare trains.
Its fares are less than two-thirds of the fares for air-conditioned classes in other trains, the distance between each seat or berth is less, the seats and berths are narrower and each coach has more seats and berths than in air-conditioned coaches in other trains.
Currently 26 pairs of Garib Rath trains are run by the Railways.
