Railways to upgrade ticket booking capacity to 2.25L a minute

The Indian Railways has decided to upgrade the capacity of ticket booking from the current 25,000 to 2.25 lakh per minute to improve the passenger reservation system (PRS).

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday that the railways is upgrading the ticketing system, including software and hardware, for hassle-free ticket booking, after providing details on steps to be taken to upgrade the system in the event of record allocations in the Union Budget.

The minister also said the railway plans to increase the capacity to attend inquiries from 40,000 to four lakh per minute.

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Earlier, the railways informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee that it had instituted an expert study through the IRCTC for strengthening the core application and backbone infrastructure, for efficient and sustainable aspects to perform adequately by providing facilitation for new functionalities, interoperability among other railway modules, and external applications with more maturity. M/s Grant Thornton, which is one of the world’s leading advisory firms, has been engaged by the IRCTC to study the existing PRS system and provide recommendations to upgrade the Indian Railway PRS systems, the railways said.

The national transporter also said a dedicated ITAF (Internet Ticket Anti-Fraud) cell is instituted in IRCTC, which continuously monitors the suspected user IDs and takes up the deactivation of personal user IDs in the IRCTC portal and App, based on extensive analysis, to prevent using the fraudulent method to book tickets.

The minister also said regular drives are being conducted by the Railway Protection Force against people/agencies found involved in illegally carrying on the business of procuring and supplying tickets for reserved accommodation.

The standing committee recommended the railways to take corrective measures and upgrade the PRS system to avoid increasing the number of IDs of malafide users.