RailEnquiry

ALLAHABAD: The IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) has achieved a record booking of 4.96 lakh e-tickets in a day. The website recorded an average of 4.47 lakh e-tickets per day since the new timing of Tatkal tickets came into force on July 7 as against 3.60 lakh it used to record earlier.

Talking to TOI, joint general manager, public relations, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, Pradeep Kundu said, "We have achieved the record booking of 4.96 lakh e-tickets through our web portal on July 13. This feat has been achieved after we have taken various measures to help genuine customers to get the tickets and to prevent unauthorised persons from booking the tickets."

Recently, Indian Railways and IRCTC have taken a slew of measures to help genuine customers to get the tickets and to prevent unauthorised persons from booking the tickets.

The opening timing of booking Advance Reservation Period (ARP) and tatkal tickets have been segregated to 8 and 10am, respectively. Agents have been barred from booking ARP/Tatkal tickets during initial two hours after the opening of booking of the above tickets, both from the PRS Counters and on the net.

To help improve user experience and availability of website during the initial peak hours, IRCTC has augmented the infrastructure capacity including hardware, software and internet bandwidth.

In addition, several important measures have also been taken to prevent misuse of individual user-IDs by the agents, which make the above growth in the booking possible. Single user registration on one e-mail ID and one mobile number has been implemented. Restriction of booking of only two tickets per IP address in the initial two hours (10am to 12pm) of opening of the booking of Tatkal tickets has been implemented.

More than 5 lakhs multiple personal user-ids and 44,000 multiple IDs created by agents have been deactivated. The IT anti-fraud and vigilance teams of IRCTC have also been analysing bookings on a daily basis and suspicious bookings are cancelled or investigated further.

With the implementation of the above measures the earlier abnormal pressure on the website has been reduced to a great extent, IRCTC is making its customers' experience more satisfying and is constantly working towards improving its facilities towards this end.

The chairman of Railway Board Vinay Mittal on his recent visit to Allahabad has also spoken about the slew of measures that has been taken for the booking of Tatkal tickets and the positive feedback received from the passengers. Do you like this story? Po