Title - Tangible reduction of pressure: Railways

Thanks to the revision of Tatkal ticket booking timings, Tuesday saw a marked improvement in the functioning of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website, leading to more bookings.While the Railways were unable to give figures of booking of general and tatkal tickets from its counters, the IRCTC readily issued comparable figures for Tuesday and Monday to show a marked improvement in its performance.

Officials cautious
Officials were cautious about the result, underlining that July happened to be a lean period and the new system would actually be put to test over the coming months, leading to the festival rush in October.The next few days will give an indication of whether the common man had actually benefited in booking the tatkal ticket.

Between 10 a.m. and 12 noon, when agents were debarred from booking tatkal tickets, the IRCTC sold 73,743 general tickets and 36,014 tatkal tickets — a marked improvement over what was booked on Monday between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. when 54,000 general reserved and 34,000 tatkal tickets were booked.

Due to the staggered load, the IRCTC website functioned well without the server getting choked even once, as a result of which both general and tatkal tickets were booked in substantially better numbers.

Officials, however, said both the website and the new guidelines would be put to the test during the peak seasons, when touts get more active.

On Tuesday, there were just 4.5 lakh hits on the IRCTC site at 10 a.m., against eight lakh hits when the counters were thrown open for general and tatkal tickets jointly previously.