Farmers lift blockade on Amritsar-Delhi track, train services yet to be restored

Neeraj Bagga

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 24

Farmers lifted their blockade on Amritsar-Delhi railway track near Jalandhar on Tuesday evening after the state government hiked state advised price (SAP) of sugarcane by Rs35 per quintal to Rs 360.

The blockade of this track crippled the train movement at the Amritsar railway station.

The Indian Railways officials today said it would take sometime to restore the normal traffic on this route. Only three trains—Howrah Mail, Amritsar to Jaipur and Dadar— headed for their respective destinations from Amritsar via Nakodar today. Similarly—Frontier and Dadar—arrived via Nakodar.

Officials said due to the absence of relevant infrastructure at the Nakodar railway station and single track, enough trains could not be plied on this route.

Vendors at the Amritsar railway station rued that their losses multiplied in the last two years. First, it was the lockdown, and then farmers blocked the track near the Jandiala Guru railway station for months together. “We hardly registered any sale in the last five days as less than six pairs of trains were running daily,” said vendors.

Ahead of the farmers’ blockade near the Jalandhar railway station, around 30 pairs of trains plied from the Amritsar railway station daily. This number used to be around 65 pairs of trains before March 2020.

“These figures cleary indicate how much loss we have suffered so far,” said vendors.

Meanwhile, officials at Shahid Madan Lal Dhingra Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT) said flow of passengers has increased considerably in the last couple of days.

The ISBT was packed to its capacity today and passengers jostled to aboard buses.

Navneet Kaur, a passenger, said, “I booked a train ticket for Delhi, which got cancelled due to the farmers’ agitation. Thus, I decided to travel by bus till Rajpura. From there I will travel by train to reach the final destination.”