Mumbai-Gandhinagar Vande Bharat becomes INSTANT success, almost fully booked on maiden run

During the Vande Bharat Express's inaugural commercial run between Mumbai and Gandhinagar stations on Saturday, more than 96 percent of the seats were reserved, according to a Western Railway (WR) official. On Friday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi signalled the train to depart from Gandhinagar. From Gandhinagar to Kalupur station in Ahmedabad, he also rode it. Only on Thursday did the new train booking begin. Sumit Thakur, the head of WR's public relations department, reported that 1,086 of the Vande Bharat train's 1,123 seats, or 96.70 percent had been reserved between the stations of Mumbai and Gandhinagar. 

All the seats in the executive chair car and 96.37 percent of the seats in the chair car of the train were booked during the maiden ride between Mumbai and Gandhinagar, he said. A Vande Bharat train has 1,123 seats, including 104 seats in the executive chair car and 1,019 seats in the chair car. Of these seats, all 104 seats in the executive chair car and 982 seats in the chair car were booked, Thakur added.

The train will run six days a week except on Sundays. During the maiden run of the train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai stations on Friday, 313 passengers, excluding media persons, travelled on it.

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The train, which connects the capital cities of Maharashtra and Gujarat, is the third Vande Bharat Express. The first such train was started on the New Delhi-Varanasi route, while the second one was started on the New Delhi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra route.

As per Thakur, passengers will have to shell out Rs 1,275 for a chair car ticket and Rs 2,455 for an executive chair car ticket for the Gandhinagar-Mumbai Central journey. For the Mumbai Central-Gandhinagar journey, a chair car ticket will cost Rs 1,440, and an executive chair car ticket will cost Rs 2,650. The difference in the fare for two journeys was due to catering charges, said an official.

With inputs from PTI