Fighting to stay in existence, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) will be slashing charges on booking e-tickets to match the competition its parent body, the Indian Railways, has decided to throw at it by launching a parallel online passenger ticket reservation system.
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's budget announcement to allow the Railways to launch a new portal and sell tickets at lower booking charges has made the IRCTC just a tourism promotional venture. It has already been shorn of its food catering business.
The IRCTC, however, has expressed its unwillingness to bow out of the e-ticket selling business without giving its parent body a fight, deciding to sell tickets at the same reduced service charge that the Railways propose to levy to hook passengers to its portal.
The Minister announced that the service charge on A/C tickets will be Rs.10 and Rs.5 for sleeper class tickets — lower by 50 per cent of the charge currently levied for the two categories of tickets. The IRCTC too proposes to bring its rates down by a similar amount.
Yields revenue
With the Railways proposing to launch the new portal in the next financial year, the IRCTC is pondering its own date to pre-empt the loss of business. As of now, the IRCTC sells 3-lakh to 3.5-lakh tickets daily and gets handsome revenue.
Like in the food catering business, the IRCTC has come under much criticism over the sale of tickets, particularly the way the Tatkal tickets are cornered by the brokers with the general public unable to even access the server and book tickets on their own.
The Railways had received more than 1,200 complaints against the poor quality of food served during the 10 months of the current financial year itself.
The Railways has now taken upon itself to set right the system.
The fact, however, remains that 154 long-distance trains are yet to be provided with pantry car facilities.
Keywords: Railway online booking
the website not working.session is getting expired again and again.I am very frustrated after using this website.Its better use other sites to book tickets.and save your time.
I have been following the Indian Railways Commercial Portal project which was to provide e-ticketing facility on the Indian Railways website. This project has been going on since 3 years and the project was supposed to be completed within 3 months of start 3 years ago. It is very shocking to see what CRIS along with HP has done after 3 years of the project. The site (www.indianrail.gov.in) is not working since the launch day the page does not open and I am not able to even register for the service forget booking. It seems like it is a combination of bad decisions and bad planning. This is a pure waste of public money, looks like another scam where officers have gobbled up lots of money in the name of a project with public interest and HP has looted a govt body by doing such a shoddy job out of it. God save this country. With Anna Hazare leading a crusade at one end and such open loots going on at the other end. You can check the site for yourself.
Food served in Railways are getting worst on the daily basis. Rajdhani Express from Bangalore to Delhi has been observed as the worst of its category. I travelled last there and my 2 years daughter fall sick due the poor quality of hot water and food provided. Need some system for the complaint booking.
Facebook and google are not transaction sites and hence should not be compared with IRCTC. Isn't it easy to tell IRCTC to block agents from tatkal than create a new passenger reservation system from scratch? These guys are crazy. Let these railway folks focus on giving the customers a better travelling experience rather than try and do everything itself?
The problem of IRCTC is, it's handling in the peak hour user traffic in booking tickets (i.e) between 8a.m to 9 a.m. Its business will not get affected even though Railways starts a new online reservation system if the traffic problem resolved.
Why IRCTC was set up when rly wanted to start catering and ticketting itself? Now when rly has taken over catering and ticketting Of rlys then Rly Board should close this corporation once for all so that its employees will not suffer throughout their life. And if Rly Board wants this corporation should exist, then give it catering and ticketting back the purpose for which it was incorporated as its name suggests Indian Rly Catering and Tourism Corporation. Why cannot Rly Board improve it through IRCTC as the whole Management is IRTS officers.
We need to have fast online ticket booking portal which can handle million of users easily like facebook and google. If CRIS achieve that goal then normal user will get confirmed ticket.Like we always said 'we shall overcome someday , deep in my heart, i do believe..
Need to have a better online reservation facility. IRCTC booking service gets disrupted every now and then, specially during the peak hours.Tatkal booking has become nearly impossible to do online. User friendliness of the website should be improved.
"The Railways has now taken upon itself to set right the system." We take comfort from the apparent fact that if there is one thing that runs right and runs well in our country it is the Railways. The tone and content of the article above is further proof.
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