The Indian Railway Ministry, has decided to run 20 new pairs of clone trains from September 21, 2020. This decision has been made in view of the heavy rush on several railway routes.

The ministry also said that these trains will be fully reserved and will run on the scheduled timings, although they will have limited stoppages.

These trains are expected to be faster than the existing ones. There will be three AC trains among the 20 clone trains and will be running in front of the special passenger trains that are already operational. This is being done to ensure that the passengers do not face issues during their travel.

The reservations for these clone trains can be done on September 19, 2020, from 8 am onwards. The tickets for 19 of these clone trains will be charged at the Humsafar Express rates only. The tickets for the clone trains running between New Delhi and Lucknow will be charged at the Janshatabdi Express rates.

The chairman of the Railway Board, V K Yadav said that the clone trains would be operated first on those routes that have a long waiting list. As per the list of these clone trains, five pairs will be run on the East Central Railways between Bihar and New Delhi. These trains will be originating and terminating at the Saharsa, Rajendra Nagar, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, and Rajgir regions in Bihar. Other than this, the trains running on the Northeast Frontier Railway lining are from Katihar (Bihar) to Delhi and back to Bihar. Five other pairs will be running on the Northern Railway line operating between Delhi and Bihar, Delhi and West Bengal (WB), Bengal to Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh to Delhi. The South-Central Railway will have 2 clone trains operating between Danapur in Bihar and Secunderabad in Telangana.

The passenger trains are now operational after the lockdown restrictions were lifted in June, with 300 of them running on the tracks since then. The clone trains will join them from twenty first of this month.