Indian Railways offers discounted round-trip parcel fare ahead of festive rush

New Delhi: The Indian Railways has introduced discounted round-trip bookings for parcel coaches just ahead of businesses stocking up for the Diwali-Christmas festive season.

Officials said this is in line with attempts to attract logistics operators and shift cargo from road to rail. A circular issued Monday said parcel aggregators can book a round trip for just 1.5 times the one-way fare. The new formula offers a 25% reduction in the combined freight charge and not a blanket reduction in charges for all railway parcel bookings.

“The offer will widen the push to bring more road cargo to rail. It comes into effect immediately and will be run under a one-year pilot,” a senior official told ET.


This broadens an earlier experiment with discounted return and round-trip freight. According to an internal study by Railways, a March 2025 pilot (on selected routes) offered a 50% return-trip rate at a round-trip charge of 1.35 times the applicable scale.

This new scheme applies to all existing and future Joint Parcel Product - Rapid Cargo Service (JPP-RCS) routes, except the Patel Nagar (PTNR) in Delhi and Chitpur (CP) in Kolkata route - where a separate discounted-freight pilot is already operating.

The Board said this measure was intended to maximise utilisation of JPP-RCS trains in the return direction and divert traffic from road to rail. By offering a lower combined charge against an upfront round-trip commitment, the arrangement seeks to make return bookings more attractive to aggregators.

The JPP-RCS policy had earlier provided graded return-journey freight discounts of 5–10% (depending on volume), which stands suspended for the duration of the pilot project.

Indian Railways earned Rs 2,064.83 crore from parcel in 2024-25, up 2.8% from Rs 2,009.30 crore a year earlier, according to its latest annual report. While parcel earnings are paltry (around 1% of freight or good revenue), they contribute significantly to the bottom line of the national transporter. The marginal annual net profit due to high recurring costs and limited avenues to raise passenger or freight fares make these new avenues crucial to meet operating ratio goals of the Indian Railways.