Indian Railway Catering and Tourism (IRCTC) happens to be the largest online reservation portal of India and IRCTC on Friday announced that an IRCTC user can now book only six railway tickets in a month. The new rule has been formulated to curb the fraudulent reservations and is expected to come into effect from February 15, 2016.
The official railway statement said, This will replace the existing system under which a maximum of 10 tickets can be booked online through IRCTC website in a month by an individual. The statement further adds, It is suspected that the 10 percent users might be involved in touting activities. Therefore to deter such touts and to facilitate genuine users, it has been decided that a maximum of 6 tickets can be booked by an individual user in a month.
In addition, to this IRCTC chairman and Managing Director AK Manocha said, We have roped in Paytm for providing a maximum option to passengers for making online payments. Efforts are also underway to bring in some more reputed caterers in our e-catering portfolio. The passenger will have now payment choice for IRCTC e-catering services, one can now make an online payment or cash on delivery as per his or her choice.
The railway ministry has taken this step after analyzing the fact that about 90 percent IRCTC users book only six tickets in a month, so it is suspected that other users may have been booking more tickets in order to sell them illegally. Recently, various steps have been taken to minimize the fraud in online reservation and the new rule is just an add-on to the existing methods to restrain illicit activities of ticket brokers.