Indian Railways introduced a mobile ticket booking application for reserving railway tickets through your mobile phones. Now no need to wait on long ques or wait for the IRCTC site to get loaded or to take printouts of the tickets, Indian Railway ticket booking has just got easy. All you need is to download the mobile ticketing application on to your mobile phone, book the ticket through it and carry some kind of identification proof. The ticket booked through it will be sent to you via SMS on your registered mobile phone.
Mobile ticket booking is one of the great initiative from the world’s fourth largest railway network, Indian Railway. With this new facility Passengers don’t have to wait long lines or pay higher rates for ticket agents or carry paper printouts of their e-Tickets anymore and they will now get a virtual ticket copy through SMS in just 20 minutes of booking.
- To book or reserve a tickets via mobile phones, you have to first register on the indianrailways.gov.in ( I think you didn’t find any link to sign-up there, it’s actually here ) or www.irctc.co.in sites , where you will get a unique ID to use on railway bookings.
- Then download any of the mobile ticketing application ( IRCTC Mobile Application (ATOM) or IRCTC Mobile Application (ngpay) or IRCTC Mobile Application (PAYMATE))by following their steps.
Mobile ticket booking is similar to web-based one, ticket booking will be open on all seven days of the week, and on each day between 11:30pm to 12:30am it will be closed. After the ticket booking you will get SMS confirmation of the ticket. This mobile ticket cannot be forwarded or transferred. Each session can book a single ticket for up to 6 passengers. You will have to carry a valid photo ID proof with this as for verification purpose.
The mobile ticketing service is part of the new website indianrailways.gov.in launched recently, which provides E-ticket booking, train alert, PNR status, train status, seat availability, train schedule, time-table, fare etc. Through this new mobile ticketing facility in place Indian railway is trying to resolve the big problems going on with online ticket reservation service provided through IRCTC. Ticket agents seem to blocking tickets, then selling it at higher price and use multiple logins to make the IRCTC website in-accessible almost everyday during morning hour ( during the talkal booking time ). The introduction of the mobile ticketing application would surely help in controlling the nuisance surrounding online reservation system.
S. Mathur, GM-IT, CRIS, said on the launch of mobile ticketing service: “The user will have the SMS ticket on his mobile phone when he enters the allotted compartment in a train and must present some identity proof to the ticket checkers. This will become a part of the reservation system being developed and implemented by CRIS (Center for Railway Information Systems) for the Railways.
There will be no additional charges. We plan to stick to our current prices. The server and the software will be run by CRIS. Travel agents will not be eliminated. We will regulate their presence better.”
More information about mobile reservation can be found at IRCTC site .
Does this new facility by Indian railway control the ticketing fraud happening around? Do comment your views on it.bile Reservation