Railway bookings: Now, tatkal sewa only 24 hrs in advance
NEW DELHI: Railways on Friday decided to reduce the advance reservation period for Tatkal tickets from 48 hours to 24 hours in a move to prevent misuse of the scheme introduced to facilitate emergency travel.
Complaints of touts misusing the scheme were increasing day by day and this left Rail Bhawan mandarins worried. While there will be no refund on confirmed Tatkal tickets except in case of cancellation of trains and late running trains, the restriction for agents to book Tatkal ticket has been extended from one hour to two hours (8 am to 10 am).Now, one has to produce identity proof to buy Tatkal tickets and there will be only four passengers per PNR for such tickets.
Tatkal reservation period was reduced from 48 hours to 24 hours to prevent misuse by unscrupulous elements who resort to speculative booking. According to the changed system, no duplicate Tatkal ticket shall be issued and it would be done only in exceptional cases on payment of full fare including Tatkal charges.
“There were many complaints regarding misuse of Tatkal tickets. The changes that will be effective within a week has been made to prevent its misuse,” Vinay Mittal, chairman, Railway Board, said.
There’s nothing new in this. It was only 24 hrs in the initial stage when tatkal was introduced. Whatever its, the stemp is very good. I visit my native place in kerala almost twice a month, depending upon situations. I reach the reservation counter by 3.00 in the midnight to get the tickets. I find many people sleeping (outside) next to the main door of the reservation counter. If they sleep at home they will get no money, but from this way they earn Rs.300/- to 500/- per ticket. Reverting the old rule back will give a bit of reprieve. Railway could make three more additions such as – (1) One of the persons travelling must go to the counter to get the ticket and show identify proof. (2). 30% of the total seats to be reserved for tatkal. (3). Tatal ticket charges should be double of the regular amount.
This is not going to help. Instead the booking should be done on the spot two hours before the departure for emergency travelers. The charges for emergency travelers should be higher and allotment must be done on the basis of distance to travel. Thus long distance travelers should be given preference. Also, the booking conformation should be done ten minutes before the departure of the train displaying the names of all those who applied for emergency quota to ensure that if a person is denied booking, it is as per a preferential treatment policy. In the arrangement now being made, as with the previous policy, all tatkal, tickets will be booked by agents in collusion with booking clerks within five minutes of opening of window.tatkal for 24 hrs before means will create problems for those who take ticket from far place agent as if it send by courier it will reach at least 1 day to another. big probelm is coming in future
Better to commence booking 12 hrs prior to travel, so that less timing is available to the staff/agents & touts to fix the deal. Identify and remove all agents’ people from Q by the RPF.
railway should control first its internal corruption, we can see on railway stations multiple agents try to sell the traing tickets in front of railway officials and railway police and these people doesnot make any significant steps to avoid such black ticketing.
Great step taken. it will reduce the misuse of tatkal ticket.because some people travels always with the ticket of another person name with identity. It will be much better if the railway will force for proper checking of identity.
The utility of the scheme will be greatly reduced. It will now be useful only for passengers at the origin; that too if the need arises within 24 hours of departure. As identity is necessary, stiff fines for misuse would have been the better option.
Why not focus on misuse of normal tickets by touts and agents. Why don’t you just jail them when you see one around the railway station. Do you think passengers are fools. Tatkal is just emergency travel, but what about normal travel. Why don’t we get tickets around the normal travel. Right from useless railway board to useless people in ticket window… everyone is corrupt. And the blame goes to aam janta for buying tickets from agent. An emergency is understandable but i have seen people going to touts on regular basis for tickets.
increase the number of boogies and trains on all roots to solve the problem. demand is more supply is less by railways on all routes
reducing the time frame for tatkal reservations will not end the misuse by touts. If Rail bhavan really wants to end this misuse then they should go to paharganj area where everyone is selling tickets. They have tickets for different locations in different names. You just go and ask for a ticket they will give you. And mind it these are valid tickets as they book tickets for different dates 2 months in advance. Please look into it and not reduce the timing for tatkal reservation.
The tatkal quota can be bifurcated into two. one portion from 48hrs another portion is from 3-4hrs before departure time, which may solve the emergency booking purpose. The railway has to do analysis of % occupation and RAC & Waiting lists in the current routes. For e.g. there are 3 trains in Mumbai- Chennai route all are full once the counter open on 90th day and tarkal also getting full on 1st hour of tatkal open date. It may be a real crowd or some agents / employees playing game inthe tickets. Requesting railways to do analysis of train requirment and increase compartments / addl trains on a regular basis in those routes, which will increase the income to the railways also. Rly., investigation team should do regulare surprise visits to reservation booking offices sharp at 8 am and find out the misuse of bookings by employees / agents, which will help the people directly booking thorugh IRCTC or through railyway counters. Another one is booking bearth level shouldbe based on age criteria. Allotting upper bearths to aged people will create more pain, now a days we (indians) are thinking about our sophasitication instead of helping to the real needy people. Media can help rlys in the above issues if rly ready to accept the fact
Till about two years back while booking a tatkal ticket the number of the ID proof (like PAN Card, Driving Licence) was also required to be given. I do not know why that requirement was removed unless it was to accommodate agents. That requirement should be reintroduced.
How many of you think that its solution??…. 5 days to 2 days and now 1 day that mean more misused. we can never hope for getting Tatqal ticket now…… Indian railway is same as it was on 60′s… when Indian population were below 75 crs but now 120 crs with same facilities…. instead of developing trying to manage with such way is very very poor management…. Indian railway can be handover completely to IRCTC… that may work better than now.
Well,its not Just the Touts but i think railways Booking Clerks are also involved coz in one of the instances when i was travelling a week ago i saw Booking time on one of the Tatkal ticket to be 8:00 AM(not a second more or Less) and there were four passengers Travelling , iwas just wondering how could some Booking clerk be an Super hero to type so fast and book the same.I think in order to root out corruption the Tatkal facility should be stopped for some period otherwise i dont think so this menace of Tatkal Tkt booking misuse will continue.I request Railways BigBosses to note this.
I have some more suggestions. On e-tickets and tickets booked by an agent all the passengers should carry photo id. When an agent books ticket his or her name should be entered in the ticket and he should produce his photo id. Once he books a ticket his name should be barred from booking ticket for 24 hrs. This should be applicable to all those who are not registered agents. The name of booking clerk’s name and time of booking also entered in the ticket. At the counters there should be a monitor turned towards the passengers to see the seat position while booking tickets. This can help to know whether the booking clerk is manipulating and whether the man standing at the counter is booking more than one ticket. Stop cancellation of reserved tickets or charge at least 50% as penalty.
I represent 90% of the Indians, We do not have computer or internet at home. If we need to book a tatkal ticket for emergency travel we need to stand in line before a ticket counter at before 6Pm the previous night, or ask the help of a agent. now after all this new rules the agent also will not be able to help us. The railways should increase the trains so that there are more seats for travellers. The railways should increase the bandwidth of the irctc servers, so that the consumers can log on to the sites with ease. The railways can increase the cost of the ticket, so only actual passengers will buy it, (anyway now we pay the same to bus operators 4 times the train fare as the bus fare). If Mamatha is more intrested in Bengal poitics then please hand over the ministry to some other party. It was much better when Lalu was the minister
Tatkal booking through agents should be made available only for ladies and senior citizens. Practically the business people and the rich take advantage of the the Tatkal is a huge scam. Most of the tickets are blocked by the Railway employees and agents. Genuine users are always deprived. But one can get a seat in train provided he gets right contacts. Day in any day out some regular faces always stand first in the queue. Even if you happen to be the first, you are pushes to the last by these elements with the connivance of the authorities and the Police.present mess.
Railways should concentrate on technological improvements to solve the heavy rush for train tickets.They must go for high speed trains,explore more routes and add more trains.We bost of development but are far behind in providing basic requirements to a common man.Railway people perticularly TCs make lots of money per day and this is known to every body.Also railway staff and their family members illegally travel free of cost with out valid documents which should be stopped immediately.Ultimately burden comes on tax payers. to
Tatkal tickets should be issued only to private individual only on producing an identity support document. This must be reflected/ recorded in the ticket for verification by the ticket examiner. This alone will check the ill use of this facility by the taunts and the ticket issuing Railway staff. Can this be done without any reservations from the Railway authorities immediately?
We Indian people’s life runs on public transportation. Even America realizes its mistake now as there was some news that US govt has sanctioned $500 billion dollars for development of public transport which was dismantled few decades ago on behest of car companies to force people to buy their cars. In our country we people travel like animal in the trains or buses after paying fare. People don’t get tickets and have to stand in queues for days. The reason not enough trains because of limited number of railway tracks. Decision making and implementation of large infrastructure projects runs at snails speed. It appears to me due to lack of computerization in governance and monitoring our lazy and corrupt bureaucracy is unable to take decision and monitor large projects in timely manner. In the USA most of the states uses IBM’s high end computer systems which are very expensive but can process massively large data without compromising security. Unfortunately, our large number of IT folks are not aware of large computer systems as they study only Lindows (Linux and Windows) x86 based computer systems in their colleges or private institutions and they propose government to use these small systems because of limitation of their knowledge-base. Being extremely cheaper they gets implemented in government departments but due to their limitation and small amount of data processing capabilities they can’t serve purpose for large public. Remember size matters.Big is better and beautiful in majority of contexts. So long story short. India will need to invest in very high end computer systems to serve its people. Today IBM is the leader in this area in the world. IBM is word’s best innovative company. However, state and central govt needs to have vision. The best thing in the world are not available at cheaper price. You get whatever you pay. BTW, I don’t work in IBM