Thursday, 19 March 2015

The Real Reason Why It's So Damn Hard To Book An Indian Railways Ticket Online

How many times have you missed booking a ticket on Rajdhani, Duronto or other such popular long-distance trains? The frustration is real. But it's not because you were late or the service failed.

The Indian Express reported that Indian Railways have zeroed in on one of the key reasons behind the customers' complaint of not able to get confirmed train tickets. IEquoted an internal investigation where the Railway authorities found out that every day, over 4,000 confirmed berths used to be hoarded by touts, minutes after the online reservation system was thrown open to the public.

IE quoted Ajay Shukla, Member (Traffic), Railway Board: "Touts would buy any ticket a day in advance and the next day, they would get ticket details changed. The booking clerk merely had to generate another PNR with the passenger details already fed into the system a day earlier. This merely took seconds." Shukla said that this facility has now been disabled for the first hour after the system opens.

Now, IE reported that since the new changes, instead of 4,000 journey/train changes in the first minute, only a few such changes are now being made, that too, in the course of the entire day.