Vande Bharat occupancy hits 99.1% in 2025-26 as the Thiruvananthapuram-Mangaluru train runs 189% full

Seats on India’s Vande Bharat chair car trains were rarely empty in 2025-26. A senior official of the Railway Board put overall Vande Bharat occupancy for the chair car fleet at 99.10 per cent for the financial year that ended on 31 March 2026, in figures that came out on Thursday, 5 November. The country’s first Vande Bharat Sleeper, which began running between Howrah and Kamakhya in January 2026, did better still, at a combined 114.54 per cent.

The busiest service on the whole network was the Kerala coastal train linking Thiruvananthapuram Central and Mangaluru Central. Train 20632, from Thiruvananthapuram to Mangaluru, recorded 189.35 per cent, the highest of any Vande Bharat run. Its return working, train 20631, posted 174.77 per cent. A figure above 100 per cent means one seat was sold more than once on the same trip: passengers who get off at intermediate stations free their seats for others boarding further down the line.

Delhi-Varanasi trains full in both directions

On the Delhi-Varanasi corridor, where Vande Bharat made its debut in February 2019, both pairs of chair car trains ran above capacity. From Varanasi to New Delhi, train 22415 recorded 117.26 per cent and train 22435 recorded 117.25 per cent. Towards Varanasi, train 22416 registered 114.05 per cent and train 22436 registered 115.19 per cent. A Vande Bharat Sleeper joined the route on 31 October 2026.

In April, the Railway Ministry put the number of passengers who used Vande Bharat trains in 2025-26 at nearly 3.98 crore, about 34 per cent more than the 2.97 crore of 2024-25. More than 160 Vande Bharat services now run across the country.

New sleeper halts at Anantapur and Guntakal

On Sunday, 1 November, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw sent the Bengaluru-Mumbai Vande Bharat Sleeper, the third such service, on its first run. The 16-coach train crosses into Andhra Pradesh with halts at Anantapur and Guntakal, then runs on to Raichur, Yadgir and Kalaburagi in Karnataka and Solapur, Pune and Kalyan in Maharashtra. Train 27652 leaves SMVT Bengaluru at 7.45 pm on every day except Monday and is due at CSMT Mumbai by 11.55 am next day. Train 27651 leaves Mumbai at 8.10 pm on every day except Tuesday and pulls into Bengaluru at noon.

At the launch, Vaishnaw said another Vande Bharat Sleeper for Karnataka would also start from Bengaluru and run through north Karnataka towards Hubballi before heading to Pune and Mumbai. No date has been announced for that train.