Indian Railways: With the beginning of the new year, the series of festivals is also starting across the country. Every year, many major festivals come from September to January. The upcoming Pongal i.e. Sankranti festival will come in January 2025. In such a situation, passengers going to their hometown usually start booking train tickets 120 days in advance to avoid the crowd. For which, berths confirmed in trains for next year’s Pongal festival were sold out within a few minutes of opening of reservations on Thursday (September 12).
According to a report in The New Indian Express, Pongal is still four months away. But if you are looking for train tickets to travel during the festive season, you may be in trouble. Most of the passengers who reached the station counters from 5 am on Thursday (September 12) to book tickets to travel on January 10 during the Pongal season next year were disappointed. The tickets for which they were standing in queue were sold out in a few minutes.
There is a huge demand expected for ticket booking for Pongal festival
During this time, tickets of Chennai-Tirunelveli Vande Bharat Express departing at 2:50 pm went to the waiting list within a few minutes. While the waiting list for sleeper coaches in all express trains going to Madurai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and other cities increased to more than 200 in a short time. At the same time, in the upcoming festivals of 2025, Bogi Utsav will be celebrated on January 13 (Monday), while Pongal will be celebrated on January 14 (Tuesday) and Mattu Pongal on January 15 (Wednesday).
In such a situation, Indian Railways is also expecting a huge demand for ticket booking for the journey on 11th and 12th January starting on Friday and Saturday.
I had to wait for almost 3 hours at the ticket counter
Meanwhile, speaking to The New Indian Express, S Ramanathan, a resident of Chetpet, said, “I waited for almost 3 hours at the Egmore ticket counter to book a ticket but could only get a waitlisted ticket. The railways should reserve at least 25% of the tickets for counter bookers instead of allowing 100% tickets to be booked online.”
Railways will consider running special trains for Pongal
A railway official said that the commercial department will consider running special trains for the Pongal festival based on the status of the waiting list of each railway route. He said, ‘Due to technical problems in the IRCTC portal, there was a problem in online booking for some time between 10 am and 10.30 am.