Indian Railways has taken a big step to make Tatkal ticket booking transparent and more accessible to common passengers. Now e-Aadhar based authentication is being made mandatory for booking Tatkal tickets through IRCTC account.
This change is going to be implemented soon and its purpose is to stop fraud, give priority to real passengers and curb ticket brokers.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav has confirmed that the Railways is going to make the ticket booking system more secure and fair through e-Aadhaar authentication. Now only those users will be able to book Tatkal tickets whose IRCTC accounts are linked to Aadhaar. Aadhaar based OTP verification will also be necessary at the time of booking.
What will change with the new rules?
- Only Aadhaar verified accounts will be allowed to book tatkal tickets.
- Only verified users will get priority for the first 10 minutes of booking.
- IRCTC agents will also not be allowed to book tickets in the first 10 minutes.
- Aadhaar verification can also be made mandatory while purchasing tickets from the counter.
Why was this step necessary?
At present, out of more than 13 crore users of IRCTC, only 1.2 crore are Aadhaar verified. Railways has decided that special monitoring will be done on those accounts which are not linked to Aadhaar. If suspicious activity is found in any account, it will be closed. This change is important in the direction of giving a fair chance to common passengers for Tatkal tickets.
Interesting pattern seen in Tatkal ticket booking
Analysis of the booking data by the Railways from May 24 to June 2 revealed some shocking facts:
AC Category:
An average of only 5,615 tickets were booked in the first minute.
22,827 tickets were booked in the second minute.
Overall, 67,159 AC tickets were sold in the first 10 minutes – 62.5% of total online bookings.
Non-AC Category:
4% of tickets (4,724) were booked in the first minute.
About 66.4% of the tickets were sold in the first 10 minutes.
Even after 8 to 10 hours, about 12% of Tatkal tickets were booked.
This data clearly shows how most tickets are lost within the first few minutes – the time when automated tools are most likely to be misused. Railways are now using artificial intelligence and surveillance systems to curb this.
What action has been taken so far?
Railways has blocked 2.4 crore fake or suspicious IRCTC accounts in the last 6 months. This is a historic initiative to take the country’s largest online ticket booking system in the right direction.
