IRCTC: New rule to make booking train tickets tougher; railway passengers must know

Agents booking e-tickets using fake User IDs on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website is soon going to be extremely tough as Railways is planning to bring some significant changes in the online signing up process.

Thousands of fake IDs are created by the agents, who use several apps on Google, to book tickets including Tatkal and later sell them at costlier price.

Now, IRCTC may ask for an additional identity proof like driving license, voter card etc in a bid to upgrade the verification process of the user other than just asking for a user ID, password and mobile number, a ZEE news report said quoting sources.

However, experts believe that asking for extra documents to upload on the website during ticket booking process will make it slower than before which might turn out to be a headache for genuine users.

Earlier this year in August, Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain had informed the Rajya Sabha that the share of railway tickets booked using digital modes of payment increased to 66 per cent of the total reserved tickets in 2017-18 from 60 per cent in 2016-17.

This year (till June), approximately 68 per cent of total reserved tickets were booked through digital means, the government was told.

Gohain also said that apart from passenger ticket booking, Railways has also introduced digital payment modes like POS machines at goods/parcel locations and also catering.

Various cashless modes like e-wallets, net banking, credit/debit cards, cash cards, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI)/Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is used for payment of tickets booked on the IRCTC website.

(With PTI inputs)