Title - Booking for railways retiring room to be 'manual' - The Times of India

NASHIK: Bona fide passengers can book retiring rooms at 27 stations across the country online, but passengers have to visit the dedicated counter at the booking office.

Indian Railways has linked the 27 stations so that train passengers to any location can have a room booked at the destination in advance with Nashik, the only one from Bhusawal division, largely benefitting from the huge number of passengers travelling from here.

"As of now, a passenger can book a retiring room personally, only after reaching the station by producing the confirmed railway reservation ticket at the counter. However, the new system allows to you to book the same in advance to ensure you have a peaceful stay. But the issue is that passengers, even if they have booked their tickets on the internet, have to physically come down to the unreserved ticketing system window No. 1 where the facility has been set up for booking the retiring room," an official said.

He pointed out that another flaw in the system was automatic cancellation of retiring rooms booked on the ticket that has been cancelled. "The booking of a retiring room is a sensitive issue and hence a proper addresses and phone numbers are taken down. For this reason, passengers have to come to the booking window and present details of the confirmed ticket to book the room. However, as of now, if the ticket is cancelled, there is no direct link to cancel the booking of the retiring room and hence the exact status of availability is not known," the railway official said.

He said at present the railways do cancellations manually and hence details of cancelled tickets are verified to ensure that bookings are also cancelled. "This takes time and could result in confusion," the official said.