In further removal of Covid-19 restrictions in Maharashtra, the railways on Sunday said it has deleted the vaccination-linked option from its ticketing app with immediate effect. Until recently, only fully vaccinated citizens were allowed to travel on local trains. Commuter bodies have welcomed the decision saying the condition caused inconvenience to scores of people.
“As per the directives from the state government on the lifting of restrictions, the railways has lifted all curbs and opened ticketing for all at counters and on the app for both railways in Mumbai. This means that commuters won’t now need to link their vaccine certificates to the ticketing app. All such instructions have now been withdrawn,” Mid Day quoted a railway spokesperson as saying.
The Maharashtra government recently decided to do away with all the restrictions from April 1 citing a drop in Covid cases in the state.
The railways official salso aid that all the authorised entry-exit gates, lifts, escalators, foot overbridges closed during the pandemic, all commercial ticket counters and ATVM machines for booking will now be opened. This is in addition to the removal of restrictions on the UTS mobile app for fresh ticketing.
In February, the Maharashtra government’s order of permitting only those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to travel in local trains in Mumbai is “illegal” and has brazenly affected the fundamental rights of citizens, said the Bombay High Court.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice MS Karnik said the orders signed by the government’s then chief secretary Sitaram Kunte were in clear diversion from the prescribed procedure under the Disaster Management Rules.
The court was hearing a bunch of public interest litigations challenging the prohibition on use of local trains in the city by unvaccinated people, saying that such a prohibition was illegal, arbitrary and in breach of the citizens’ fundamental right to move freely across the country.
Earlier in January, the state government had told the Bombay High Court the prohibition on travel by local trains for those not fully vaccinated is legal and reasonable. “This is a reasonable restriction imposed on the citizen’s fundamental right and such prohibition has been imposed in the larger public interest, for their own benefit,” government’s lawyer Anil Anturkar had said.
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