The railways has increased the available time for booking of reserved tickets through internet.
The tickets will now be available from 12:30 am to 11:45 pm daily with effect from September 20. Currently, internet bookings can be made only till 11:30 pm. An increase of 15 minutes has been made.
Railway spokesperson Anil Saxena told Deccan Herald that the booking at counters for current booking will also have same timings. The ministry has also decided to provide easy ticketing facility to women passengers. They now need not stand in the general queue. The ministry has ordered to give separate counters or similar facilities to women passengers at reservation offices.
The railways have issued a circular which contains elaborate instructions for providing better ticketing facilities to women passengers. At computerised reservation office, a separate reservation counter would be earmarked for women if the average demand per shift is not less than 120 tickets.
In case, there can not be any earmarking of exclusive counter for ladies, the requests received from ladies should be dealt with along with the reservation requests of the specific categories — senior citizen, physically handicapped, former MPs, MLAs, accredited journalists and freedom fighters.
In non-computerised centres too, they would not have to join the general queues. They would be attended to separately. “This facility will, however, be available only from 11:30 am to avoid misuse of this facility by unscrupulous elements to block accommodation during opening hours of general and Tatkal reservation,” said the ministry.
Published 18 September 2015, 19:29 IST