Days after announcing that those who are fully vaccinated will be permitted to travel in the Mumbai local trains, the Maharashtra Government has now launched its website through which people can generate their train passes and download them.
Around 106 stations of which 53 fall under the purview of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai started distributing offline passes for people who have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. A vaccinated person can only avail of the facility if they received the vaccine at least 15 days before they generate the pass.
The Maharashtra government launched the e-pass website on August 12. This website will help in creating identity cards online and will automatically verify vaccination status.
The E-pass can be generated at https://epassmsdma.mahait.org/LoginHandler.htm.
The link has provisions for individual citizens as well as organisations requesting for passes for their employees.
1) Fully vaccinated citizens are expected to enter their mobile numbers registered with Cowin after which they will receive an OTP.
2) After entering the OTP, the website verifies the vaccination record of the recipient and asks them to upload an image of themselves.
3) Post submission, a downloadable QR code e-pass will be sent via SMS within 48 hours. This QR code will help railway officials in identifying people who have been using fake passes to travel via the local trains. These QR codes will act as personal identity cards that people used to earlier carry with their monthly passes.
4) Commuters can then show these QR codes at the ticket counters at the railway station and choose whether they want a first class or general, monthly or quarterly pass as per their needs. The e-pass is only a means to reduce crowding at stations and shorten the duration of verifying vaccination documents at the train stations.
5) Payment and availing of actual passes will still have to be carried out physically at the railway stations.
For organisations/ establishments, the application is divided into medical, education, and utility services. While medical includes all health care workers, education only permits registrations for teachers. Utility services are divided into telecom, defence, metro/monorail, gas supply, electric supply.
As of 7 pm on August 11, Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad have over three lakh fully vaccinated people between the ages of 18-44 and over 25.4 lakh fully vaccinated people above the age of 45. All these citizens are eligible to avail of the local services by registering for a pass.
