With the railways beginning its passenger services on May 12 for 15 pairs of trains between Delhi and major cities of the country, over 9,000 people left the national capital on Wednesday on board nine trains.

According to data accessed by PTI, of the nine trains from Delhi, eight which left for Howrah, Jammu, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Dibrugarh, Mumbai, Ranchi and Ahmedabad were booked beyond their capacity.

Only one train, which ran to Patna, the capital of Bihar, ran at 87 per cent capacity, the data showed.

Official data also showed that till Wednesday, 2,08,965 passengers had booked tickets for these special trains for journeys over the next seven days.

Of the nine trains that left on their journeys on Wednesday, the Howrah to New Delhi train which can carry 1,126 people at a time had a booking for 1,377 passengers which is 122 per cent of the train's capacity. While the New Delhi - Thiruvananthapuram special train was booked at 133 per cent of its capacity, the New Delhi-Chennai train ran on 150 per cent occupancy.

Similarly, the New Delhi - Jammu Tawi special ran at 109 per cent occupancy, while the New Delhi - Ranchi train ran at 115 per cent occupancy, the New Delhi - Mumbai Central train at 117 per cent, New Delhi - Ahmedabad at 102 per cent and the New Delhi-Dibrugarh train ran with an occupancy of 133 per cent.

'Overbooking does not mean that passengers are standing in the aisles, it just means that there is movement of people while the train is on the run. People are boarding and deboarding at halt stations and there have been multiple bookings, said an official.

Among the trains that departed from Delhi, the only train on Wednesday which did not run on full capacity was the New Delhi - Rajendra Nagar (Patna) train which had a capacity of 1,239, but carried only 1,077 passengers making it only 87 per cent full.

Officials said the reason behind low occupancy of the train could be that Bihar accounted for more than 100 trains which carried its workers home since May 1.

This also accounts for the rise in the data on passenger numbers that the railways had provided for the eight trains that left for their destinations on Tuesday.

While on Tuesday evening the ministry had said the number of passengers who travelled on the eight trains was 8,121, on Wednesday they revised the figure to 13,118.

On Wednesday, a total of 13 trains were operated. While nine departed from Delhi, four arrived here and together they carried 19,374 passengers to their destinations.

The trains which arrived in Delhi too had around 130 percent occupancy rate, officials said.