18,000 Special Trains for Chhath. People Are Still Riding in Train Toilets. Both Sides Are Spinning It.

 

Chhath is days away. Millions of workers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are trying to get home.

Many are not getting seats. Some are not even getting floor space.

At Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction, passengers told Dainik Bhaskar they sat inside train toilets because the general coaches were full. In Patna, Dainik Jagran listed festival specials running more than 24 hours late. In Delhi, ETV Bharat met families of three, four and even sixteen travelling without a single confirmed ticket.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw says about 18,000 special trains are running for Diwali and Chhath this year, up from about 12,000 last year (ABP Live).

Now watch what social media does with this.

The ruling side's supporters repeat the big number. 18,000 sounds like a solved problem. It is not. A number of trains is not a number of seats, and a seat is what a tired mother with two children needs. When a person sits in a toilet for twenty hours, the headline figure has failed that person.

The opposition side posts the toilet videos. That is fair. Then some accounts go further. Viral posts claim India has only 12,000 or 22,000 trains in total, so 18,000 specials must be a lie. That mixes up two things. Festival figures count special train trips, so one train running ten times counts as ten. Pappu Yadav, MP from Purnia, wrote that the BJP government is unaware of the suffering. Jan Suraaj-linked accounts call it the "reality of BJP's special trains". The anger is real. The maths in some of these posts is not.

Both sides are using the same passengers as props. One uses them as a success number. The other uses them as a weapon. Neither post gets one more person a seat.

Before you share a Chhath train video, ask:

• Is the number about trains, trips or seats?
• When and where was this video shot? This year, or an old clip?
• Who posted it, and what do they want you to feel?
• What would actually fix this: more coaches, better planning, or jobs closer to home?

The deeper story sits under both hashtags. Lakhs of young people leave home because the work is somewhere else. Every festival, they pay for it in hours spent standing in a corridor.

If a young person has to leave home to find work and ride in a toilet to come back, who exactly is winning this argument?

Sources: Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran, ETV Bharat, ABP Live (Nov 2026); posts on X by Pappu Yadav and Jan Suraaj Charcha (Nov 11-12, 2026).