The railways witnessed a whopping 1,000 per cent jump in bookings for AC-1 coaches, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 currency.
When demonetisation kicked in on Wednesday, 27,000 tickets were booked for AC-1 coaches, compared to 2,000 reserved on Tuesday. Similarly, the railways sold 70,000 tickets on Wednesday, a near 90 per cent hike from 37,000 tickets sold a day before. There was a 16 per cent rise in the AC-3 coach bookings too, as per data compiled by the Railway Ministry.
While announcing the demonetisation move, the Centre had allowed ticketing counters at railway stations to accept old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes to avoid passenger inconvenience.
After the railways took some measures to check such “unusually” high bookings on Wednesday, the jump in the reservations dipped the following day on Thursday.
Nonetheless, there was an 800 per cent jump in bookings for AC-1, almost 73 per cent jump in AC-3 and a 16 per cent increase in AC-3 bookings on Thursday, compared to Tuesday. After a sudden spurt in bookings, railway officials were instructed that any cash transaction worth above Rs. 50,000 be accepted only after obtaining a copy of the PAN card. The railways have set up a special cell to monitor high value transactions at ticketing counters in a bid to tackle attempts at laundering black money through exempted channels.
The railways have further announced that the refund of cancellations worth above Rs. 10,000 will either be processed through cheque or transfer to bank accounts.
Indian Railways spokesperson Anil Saxena said on Monday that existing instructions for usage of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes for the purpose of ticketing, on-board catering on trains will continue till midnight of November 24.
The Finance Ministry has instructed all the exempted establishments to maintain complete record of all transactions made with old notes.
This article has been corrected for a factual error.
