In my pre-budget TV 9
interview, I have said about expanding the scope of Information Technology (IT)
in Railway ticketing. (Entire episode from http://goo.gl/ARbIio - 09:07 min )
With this regards, I
am glad to see that the Indian Railway Budget 2014 (http://goo.gl/5DfElJ) covers:
1)
Passenger Amenities/Services & Station Management -
including Cleanliness & Catering
- Expanding scope of online booking of train, coaches, berth & chair car.
2)
IT Initiatives including revamping reservation system
- Revamping railway reservation system into next generation e-ticketing system.
- E-ticketing to support 7200 tickets per minutes to allow 1,20,000 simultaneous users.
- Augmentation of Coin operated Automatic Ticket Vending Machines.
While planning
the above provisions, I desire that the Honourable Railway Minister account for
the following to maximize the benefit to the people:
v All discounted/ concession tickets be allowed to be booked online.
-
Currently
tickets availing senior citizen concessions can be booked online, but reservation availing
concession
of season ticket cannot
be booked online.
v Any additional charges for online
booking through IRCTC should be discontinued.
-
Currently
online reservations through IRCTC are levied service charges, if you are using credit
card other than the IRCTC credit card. This means that the customer has to pay
service charges to IRCTC and additional transaction charges to Credit Card
Company.
-
Such
an additional charge is not seen in other common online bookings like for movie
tickets. Currently any portal offering online movie ticket does not levy any
additional service charges and transaction charges by Credit Card Company.
-
Discontinuation
of charges will encourage more online bookings .
In implementing the above,
Indian Railways could potentially save by:
v Reducing the need for opening
additional reservation counters and centers and may also be able to reduce the number
of existing counters in every centers.
v Opening and maintaining every
reservation counter requires huge infrastructural investment, as also huge cost
of manpower by way of Salary, retirement benefits, etc.
v This saving will be much more than
whatever revenue earned by way of IRCTC service charges.
v Discontinuation of additional
charges plus allowing more ticket types to be booked online will also boost the
revenue which will reduce the need for the fees to cover any costs with
developing and maintaining infrastructure for online bookings.
v People will also be benefited by saving cost
and time of visiting reservation centers.
