Services of passenger flights, trains to remain suspended till May 3

Services of all passenger trains and flights will remain suspended till May 3, officials said on Tuesday soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the nationwide lockdown to combat coronavirus will be extended for another 19 days.

In a televised address, Modi said the current three-week-old lockdown, billed as the world's largest, will continue till May 3 and that the restrictions could be reviewed for certain parts of the country on April 20.

The current spell of 21-day lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight Tuesday.

Following the prime minister's announcement, the Indian Railways extended the suspension of all its passenger services till the end of the lockdown.

According to official data, a staggering 20 million people travel daily on nearly 15,000 passenger trains across the country.

The Civil Aviation Ministry too said services of all international and domestic commercial passenger flights will remain suspended till midnight of May 3. A number of airlines had taken bookings for passenger travel, hoping to operate flights from Wednesday.

On an average, around 500,000 people travel by domestic, and international flights to and from India, daily.

The Railways said the movement of goods and parcel trains will remain operational to ensure supply of essential commodities across the country.

"In continuation of the measures taken in the wake of COVID-19 lockdown, it has been decided that all passenger train services on Indian Railways, including premium trains, mail/express trains, passenger trains, suburban trains, Kolkata Metro Rail, Konkan Railway shall continue to remain cancelled till 2400 hours of May 3," a statement from the railways said.

The railways further said that all counters for booking of rail journey tickets for reserved/unreserved travel at railway stations and outside railway station premises shall remain closed till May 3 midnight.

The railway board has issued instructions to the zones that full refunds for fares of cancelled trains should be initiated by them.

In a tweet, the civil aviation ministry said: "All domestic and international scheduled airlines operations shall remain suspended till 11.59 pm of 3rd May 2020."