New Delhi:
Indian Railways is making a big change to the Tatkal ticket booking system. Soon, Tatkal tickets will be booked only through e-Aadhaar verification.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said this move aims to stop fake bookings and ensure that real passengers can get confirmed tickets on time.
Passenger’s Struggle for Confirmed Tickets
Every day, about 2.25 lakh people try to book Tatkal tickets online through IRCTC. But the tickets get sold out within seconds of the booking window opening, leaving most users disappointed almost immediately.
Data from May 24 to June 2 shows that in the AC category, only 5,615 tickets were booked in the first minute, even though over 1.08 lakh were available.
Within ten minutes, over 67,000 AC tickets (62.5% of the total) were booked. In the non-AC category, 66% of the tickets were also sold in the first 10 minutes.
This shows the demand is extremely high, and many users—especially bots and scripts—get an advantage over normal passengers.
13 Crore Users, But Only 1.2 Crore Linked to Aadhaar
IRCTC has over 13 crore users, but only 1.2 crore of them have Aadhaar-verified accounts. The Railways has started checking the rest.
Around 20 lakh accounts are considered suspicious and are under review. Those found to be fake will be deactivated.
Aadhaar-Linked Users Will Get Priority
The Railways plans to give booking priority during the first 10 minutes to users who have linked their IRCTC accounts with Aadhaar.
The system will recognize these users first and process their bookings. This step is expected to stop ticket booking through bots and make the system more fair and transparent.
New System Coming Soon
The goal is to make Tatkal ticket booking more secure and trustworthy using technology. The Aadhaar-based system will be introduced shortly.
Once active, Aadhaar verification will be mandatory for Tatkal booking. This will reduce black marketing and give genuine passengers a better chance of getting confirmed tickets.
