JOIN USThe service is also being launched at the KarnatakaOne centres in nine cities across the State.The initiative has already been introduced at five of the centres in Bangalore.
An official of the e-Governance Department told Deccan Herald that the system had been introduced at its centres in Divyashree Chambers, R T Nagar, Vijayanagar and BDA complex at Banashankari 2nd stage and shall become operational at other centres and mini-centres.
Advance reservations and tatkal reservations can be made at the centres.
Cancellation will also be done at the same centres and money will be refunded through cash for cash transactions and will be debited to the account for credit card transactions.
However, unreserved tickets will not be issued at the counters.
The service shall also become operational at KarnatakaOne centres at Mysore, Davangere, Tumkur, Hubli-Dharwad, Mangalore, Shimoga, Bellary, Belgaum and Gulbarga.
The e-Governance Department has tied up with Via, the travel services company for the reservations. Via already offers the booking facility through its web portal.
The service was being tested by the e-Governance Department for quite some time as the notoriously slow Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) servers took their time to respond.
“The load on the IRCTC servers are heavy, so whether you log in directly at their site or through us, it is a little slow. However, all the software issues have been resolved,” the official said.
Advance booking for railway tickets had been introduced earlier at BangaloreOne centres, but was discontinued after a few months due to enduring problems with the software.
Even the IRCTC had just started its online booking system and those who booked tickets at BangaloreOne centres found themselves saddled with multiple PNR (Passenger Name Record) numbers for one ticket.
“Each of the PNR number was counted as one ticket and the IRCTC charged us for it. So we had to stop the service,” the official recalled.
Other problems also surfaced as cancellations transacted at the BangaloreOne centres did not show up on the IRCTC servers and they refused to accept it as a valid cancellation.