New Delhi: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is reportedly set to increase its ticketing capacity to ensure that passengers booking tickets will not have to endure long waiting times.
According to reports, this initiative has begun and is expected to be completed by March 2025. Following this upgrade, passengers will be able to book their tickets online without any waiting time after clicking. The ticket issuance process will reportedly start immediately, allowing commuters to receive their tickets within a brief period.
The organization is also taking steps to prevent issues where money is deducted but tickets are not issued. Reports suggest that commuters will soon experience no difficulties when booking their tickets.
IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Sanjay Jain addressed the reasons for prolonged waiting times, such as money deduction during ticket booking, payment failures, or delays in receiving confirmed tickets. He attributed these issues to the current low capacity, explaining that the booking capacity is insufficient compared to the volume of people processing online ticket bookings, leading to passenger inconvenience.
Reports indicate that IRCTC has three crore users nationwide. Currently, over nine lakh tickets are booked online daily, including bookings made by passengers and agents. More than two crore passengers travel by train each day.
In 2023, Indian Railways decided to enhance the ticket booking capacity from 25,000 to 2.25 lakh per minute to improve the passenger reservation system.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that the railways are updating the ticketing system, both software and hardware, to facilitate seamless ticket booking. The minister mentioned that the system upgrade followed detailed plans for improvements in the event of record allocations.
