Indian Railways will start operating Vande Bharat Express trains on five more routes from June 26, including one between Bengaluru and Hubballi.
This is the first time that five semi-high-speed trains will start operations on the same day and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to flag off all five trains via video conferencing.
The routes on which the five trains will run are – Bengaluru-Hubballi, Mumbai-Goa, Patna-Ranchi, Bhopal-Indore and Bhopal-Jabalpur.
The railway ministry had cancelled the launch of the Mumbai-Goa Vande Bharat train scheduled on June 3 after the Odisha tragedy.
This will also be the first launch of Vande Bharat, after the three-train accident in Odisha on June 2 that claimed 288 lives.
In the past, flagging off of the new Vande Bharat Express trains was done with a lot of fanfare, but launching event of these five new trains will be a relatively austere event due to the Odisha accident, said officials in the railway ministry