2 July 2012

Tatkal ticket booking timing revised


The Ministry of Railways today decided that, with effect from July 10, 2012, booking of tickets under the Tatkal scheme would start at 1000 hours on the previous day of journey from the train originating station instead of 0800 hours as at present.
This is one of the measures the Railways are taking to eliminate the scourge of touts who corner the Tatkal tickets and then sell them to needy passengers at a premium.

An official press release said no authorised agents, including agents of IRCTC and RTSAs/RTAs, would be allowed to book Tatkal tickets from 1000 hours to 1200 hours.

The existing restriction of not allowing these agents booking of general tickets on the opening day from 0800 hours to 1000 hours will also continue, the release said.

The Tatkal scheme was launched by the Railways to meet urgent travel requirements of passengers who have to travel at short notice. For this, the Railways levy Tatkal charges, which range from Rs 300 in AC 2-tier and AC 3-tier to Rs 150 for AC Chair Car and Sleeper class in peak periods, over and above the journey fare.

The facility is available only to full fare paying passengers only and not to those travelling on concessional tickets.

Usually, four berths per coach in AC 2-tier and 6 berths per AC 3-tier and AC Chair Car coaches are ear-marked for the Tatkal Scheme. In the case of sleeper class, it is 10 per cent of the accommodation or one coach, whichever is less. All vacant Tatkal accommodation after the preparation of reservation charts is treated as general accommodation and booked accordingly.

The booking under the Tatkal Scheme is done only from originating to terminating point of the train and charged accordingly, though passengers can opt to board the train from an intermediate station.

However, on certain trains, the Railways can earmark Tatkal reservation quota at the originating station and one more important station where the number of berths/seats available for reservation is large.

Meanwhile, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC), which operates the railway reservation website, said that, even though capacity had been substantially increased during the last few years, the demand window had shrunk to the first few minutes when the Tatkal booking opens at 0800 hours. This results in skewed demand where the resources remain under strain at 0800 hours and underutilised during the rest of the day.

IRCTC said various steps had been taken to augment the resources, including software and hardware, to meet the growing demand. Booking through mobile phones has also been launched on a pilot basis, it said.

A user on IRCTC can open his account for booking of e-tickets only once and multiple sessions with single user ID cannot be opened. This is aimed at enabling more users to access the website and reduce congestion at 0800 hours

To ensure that agents and touts do not corner tickets, the IRCTC has taken several steps. All payment initiated before 8 am are logged out to eliminate the possibility of scripting with data pre-filled prior to 8 am. Mobile telephone numbers of users are verified and only two tickets can be booked per IP address between 8 am and 10 am to prevent multiple bookings from the same office complex or internet cafe.