Railway Tatkal Ticket Booking Timing Revised

Indian Railways is going to revise the tatkal ticket booking timing from today. Reservation of tatkal ticket will start at 10 AM on the previous day of journey from train originating station instead of 8 AM at present.

The new rule will become effective from 10th July 2012. Also no authorized agents will be allowed to book tickets during the first two hours i.e in between 10:00 to 12:00.

Railway is planning to open separate tatkal counters in major stations for ticket booking. But in small stations where there is only one counter, the same counter will be used for tatkal ticketing also. Here the counter will be reserved for tatkal people exclusively in between 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM.

IRCTC is also in the process of developing an e-ticket application to address the online demand for e-tickets.

Tatkal ticket booking is yielding a highest revenue of Rs.847 crore in the year 2011-12 to the government. But still the IRCTC website server is not capable of handling user requests in the peak time.

IRCTC website says that a verification call may be made for the bookings done between 10:00 am to 10:15 am to verify userid, pnr, passenger mobile number and passenger details. Any misleading information may lead to cancellation of e-ticket and an appropriate legal action. But I don’t know whether IRCTC will really call, because lakhs of tickets will be booked in this meantime.

The Ministry of Railways has also initiated steps to increase handling capacity of its website through short term and long term measure. The present e-ticket capacity will increase from existing about 3.5 lakh bookings to around 5 lakh bookings per day in about four months period in the short term which will further be increased to about 8 lakh bookings per day in the long term plan.

The Indian Railway has also put in place measures to make online Tatkal bookings easier. High capacity database servers have been installed. The Internet bandwidth has been increased from 344 mbps to 450 mbps. Hope the new rules and facilities will bring some relief to common man. Also this will prevent touts from getting tatkal tickets.

For any complaint, against the e-ticket agents, one may contact agentcomplaint@irctc.co.in (011-23745962) or care@irctc.co.in (011-39340000) according to Railway release.

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