Ravi Dwivedi / CC BY-SA 4.0
Extra trains are being added for Chhath, yet passengers face more than a shortage of tickets. Reports from Delhi, Pune and Patna describe different points of strain: securing a booking, getting aboard and arriving in time for the next connection. More departures can ease demand without immediately resolving all three.
Northern Railway’s 11 November bulletin scheduled 29 special trains from the Delhi area for Thursday, 12 November, and allowed for additional unreserved services according to the rush. By Thursday afternoon, Navbharat Times reported an updated railway statement putting the day’s total at 31, with another 24 planned for Friday. The earlier bulletin also recorded three unscheduled specials on 10 November, beyond the 27 already scheduled. These are service counts, not a measure of how many passengers still need seats.
At the destination end, Jagran’s Patna report, published at 10:03 am on Thursday, described several long-distance services running hours late, including festival specials delayed by roughly a day. It also reported problems for passengers with onward connections. Those figures are a morning snapshot, not a live running-status board, and the report does not establish a single cause for all the delays.
The squeeze is not confined to Delhi–Bihar travel. The Indian Express reported on 6 November that some Pune services were showing “regret”, meaning further waitlisted bookings were unavailable. A local travel agent described difficulty boarding the Hadapsar–Banaras Amrit Bharat despite its 11 general coaches. Pune Railway Division, meanwhile, said it had scheduled more than 460 festive services and would consider further additions as demand rose. The agent’s observations are not a network-wide boarding survey.
Railways has also changed the waiting arrangements. Its official account of New Delhi station describes reserved and unreserved holding facilities and baggage screening moved outside the station building. It reported average daily footfall of about eight lakh across major Delhi stations during 1–5 November, against a usual five lakh. These are passenger movements across several stations, not unique people stranded at New Delhi. Holding space can make a wait more manageable; it cannot itself provide a confirmed seat or recover a missed connection. For travellers, the useful information remains train-specific: the booking status, boarding arrangements and latest expected departure.
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