UN-TOUTING THE RAILWAYS

Whenever one enters our National capital's railway station, one cannot escape the glimpses of touts selling tickets without any fear of a police standing all around the railway station. Recently, as we all know that our Indian Railways has adopted a good method to tackle this tout's menace by compulsory carrying of ID proofs. But, I was shocked how still these touts are thriving at New Delhi railway station ? This made me intrigued about how these touts manage to get tickets for you, with the same name of demanding customers. And I have got the answer.

It is very simple to understand. I hope many of you know that we have current reservation facility at most of our prominent stations where tickets are booked immediately in case of availability. These tickets are issued just an hour before the departure of the train. And this is a biggest loophole. As we all know that the charts are prepared around 3 hours before the departure of train. So once chart is prepared the position of the seats of the travelers stand by the same as it appears on the chart. In these two hours (3 - 1) between chart preparation and issuing of tickets at current reservation facility, there are many travelers who cancel their tickets in which some are those who have confirmed tickets too. These cancelled tickets along with the remaining confirm tickets yet to be booked if there, are put on sale by railways just 1 hour before the train departure. This is an opportunity for these touts to drive their business. There is unholy nexus of the ticket counter clerks and these touts which make such kind of corruption possible. The train ticket counter clerks pass information of the train tickets to these touts on demand basis and have a fixed amount of money they charge from touts and this amount is not small bucks but amount as good as around 50% of the ticket fare. Within these two hours this unholy work happens without any check. There are instances when the tickets are available for particular train on IRCTC site after chart preparation i.e. 3 hours before train departure but they are siphoned off before the 1 hour time limit of ticket issuing.

This kind of current reservation system is not only promoting corruption and making these touts to run their business but also injustice to the people travelling with RAC or waiting tickets. Railways should go away with this system of issuing just before an hour but instead just start it after chart preparation. The digital display at counters should show real time data of each train tickets which are cancelled on real time basis in those 3 hours, so that people can purchase tickets without these touts.

Other thing that railways can do is that send an SMS to the passengers travelling by RAC and waiting tickets in that 3 hours in case their ticket has been confirmed because of the cancellation of confirmed tickets by other passengers. My honest advice to Railways is to use IT effectively in the service of the nation and its citizens.