Tejas train delayed by 2 hours, IRCTC to pay over Rs 4 lakh compensation to passengers

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New Delhi: India’s first private train, the Tejas Express, was delayed by 2.5 hours in three trips on Saturday-Sunday, due to which IRCTC will have to pay around Rs 4.5 lakh for the maximum 2035 passengers for the first time.

Tejas arrived late by about two and a half hours due to a signal failure at Delhi railway station after heavy rain on Saturday. Even on Sunday, the Lucknow-Delhi train was delayed for about an hour.

Tejas Express is the first train in the country, whose passengers get compensation for the train being late.

There is a provision to get a compensation of Rs 100 for the train being late by one hour and Rs 250 for the delay of two hours or more. 

IRCTC operating the train will have to refund a total of three lakh 93,500 rupees to 1574 passengers of Tejas two trips on Saturday at the rate of 250 rupees per person, while 561 passengers of the first round on Sunday will have to be paid 150 rupees for delay of one hour.

Equipped with flight-like facilities, Tejas Express first ran between Lucknow and Delhi on 4 August 2019. 

So far there have only been complaints about five times for delays of less than an hour. 

IRCTC claims that the train has managed to have no delays 99.9 per cent of the time.

This is the first case in almost two years, where IRCTC will have to pay such a huge amount if the train is late.

Tejas was once two hours late due to fog last winter. Then more than one and a half thousand passengers had been paid for the delay. The train, which stopped during the second wave of COVID-19, has resumed on 7 August.