Indian Railways have taken a number of preventive and punitive measures in order to curb e-ticketing malpractices and make IRCTC reservation website foolproof. In a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal explained these measures.
Passengers cannot book tickets on abbreviated names. Full name of the passenger and the surname wherever applicable are captured at the time of booking reserved tickets.
Carrying of prescribed identity proof has been made compulsory for one of the passengers while undertaking journey in reserved class.
Regular checks are conducted in mass contact areas such as Passenger Reservation System (PRS) centres, booking offices, platforms, trains etc. to prevent unauthorized ticketing activities including the use of scripting software. Such checks are also intensified during peak period like festivals, holidays etc.
In case of online booking of tickets, checks have been applied on minimum time required to enter the passenger details and CAPTCHA and no ticket can be booked before 35 seconds. User IDs are checked on daily basis and those IDs found using malpractices like fast booking of tickets are deactivated.
The authorized agents of IRCTC have been restricted from booking tickets during first fifteen minutes of opening the Advance Reservation Period (ARP) booking and Tatkal booking.
General public are educated not to buy tickets from unscrupulous elements and consequences of buying tickets from these sources.
Restrictions have been put on creation of IRCTC user ID and booking of tickets per user.
Dynamic CAPTCHA has been introduced at registration, login and booking page.
Multilayer security and regular audits by Standardization Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) have been put in place.
A limit of booking six Railway tickets by an individual user in a month has been set in case of booking from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) portal. This limit has been revised to 12 Railway tickets in a month for those individual users who have linked their IRCTC user ID with their respective Aadhaar number and ensured that at least one of the passengers in the passenger list is verifiable through Aadhaar number.
Regular drives are being conducted by RPF against persons or agencies found involved in unauthorized carrying of business of procuring and supplying of railway tickets. The offenders are booked under section 143 of the Railways Act. Cases having wider ramifications and involving ingredients of other offences are being dealt in coordination with other law enforcement agencies like Police and CBI.
PRABAL query based application is used for verification of IRCTC IDs to detect the cases of illegal E-ticketing with follow up action.
