Railway Minister Piyush Goyal will inaugurate Tejas Express from Amhedabad (File)
The Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas Express, the second train to be run by railway subsidiary Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), will be flagged off by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani from Ahmedabad on Friday.
The commercial run of the train will start from January 19, 2020, from Ahmedabad, the railways said. The first such train, the Lucknow-Delhi Tejas Express, has been running since last year.
The tickets of this train can be booked only online on IRCTC website and there will be no booking available at railway reservation counters, they said.
The train seats can also be booked through IRCTC's online travel portal partners like Paytm, Ixigo, PhonePe, Make My Trip, Google, Ibibo, Railyatri and others.
This train 82902/82901 shall ply on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Ahmedabad route six days a week with Thursday as an off-day for maintenance activities.
To start with, this fully air-conditioned train shall have two executive class chair cars having 56 seats each and eight chair cars having capacity of 78 seats each.
The total carrying capacity of the train will be 736 passengers. The train will start its journey at Ahmedabad at 06:40 hours and will reach Mumbai Central at 13.10 hours, having scheduled commercial halts at Nadiad, Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Vapi and Borivali.
For the return journey, the train will leave Mumbai Central at 15:40 hours and will reach Ahmedabad at 21:55 hours having scheduled enroute halts at Borivali, Vapi, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara and Nadiad.
While there will be no concession tickets in the train, children below 5 years of age have been exempted from fare and will be booked along with their parents. Names of children so booked will not appear on the chart. Children of age five years and above will be booked at full fare and will be provided with a seat, the railways said.
Train fare will be dynamic in nature keeping in consideration the prevailing bus, taxi, rail and airfares. The train will have different series of fares for lean, busy and festive seasons. Further, train fares will be on point to point basis.
Current booking will be available to users after preparation of first chart which will normally be between four hours before and up to five minutes before the scheduled departure of the train.
There will be no tatkal quota or premium tatkal quota in the train. There will be only General Quota and Foreign Tourist Quota. Foreign Tourist Quota of 6 seats in EC and 12 seats in CC will be available for Foreign Tourists.
All passengers travelling on IRCTC train will be provided with Rail Travel Insurance of up to Rs 25 lakhs, free of cost by IRCTC. This complimentary travel insurance also includes an exclusive coverage of Rs. 1 lakh against household theft / robbery during the travel period of the passengers.
Besides this special feature, in a first of its own, IRCTC will also pay a compensation of Rs 100 in case the train during its run is delayed by more than one hour and Rs 250 in case of delay of more than two hours to every passenger.