The North East Frontier Railway has added three more coaches to a special train that is scheduled to leave here for Bangalore on Saturday to facilitate the return of people from the northeast, who recently fled from various places in the South in the wake of rumours. The train, initially, had 14 sleeper coaches.
“The train (No. 02510) will now have 17 sleeper coaches and leave Guwahati at 1.15 p.m. on Saturday. It is scheduled to reach Bangalore at 6 p.m. on Monday. Each coach will have 72 berths. We have added three more coaches in view of heavy demand for tickets,” Public Relations Officer (PRO) of North East Frontier Railway Jayanta Kumar Sarma told The Hindu .
The railway authorities decided to run this special train at the request of the Assam government. The train will have 23 stoppages en route its 2992 km-long journey. They include Kokrajhar, Kishanganj, Howrah, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Chennai Central, Katpadi and Jolarpettai.
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Assam Home Secretary, G. D. Tripathi, said the State government had requested the railway authorities to run another additional train on September 5, and the North East Frontier Railway had agreed to run a train. With the two additional trains on September 1 and September 5, there will be a train every day for the next five days, including the regular trains between Guwahati and Bangalore, which run thrice a week. The day was peaceful, with no reports of any untoward incident from Kokrajhar and neighbouring districts.