Indian Railways Ticket Booking New Rules

Bhopal Railway Division PRO Navl Agrawal (नवल अग्रवाल) has confirmed the new railway arrangements. He explained how passengers will directly benefit from these changes.

Indian Railways has once again revised its reservation services. Under the new system, the maximum limit for issuing waiting tickets has been fixed. Now, in mail/express trains, only twice the number of available seats in AC Executive and First Class will be issued as waiting tickets. In Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains, a maximum of 60% waiting tickets will be issued in these classes. Under the new system, in mail/express trains, the maximum waiting list limit for AC Second, Third and Chair Car will be 60% of their seat availability.

In Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains, this limit will be a maximum of 40% in these classes. Meanwhile, in sleeper and chair car classes, a maximum of 40% waiting tickets will be issued in excess of the number of seats. Earlier, on 17 April, the Railway Board had issued an order to all zonal railways and the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) in this regard. According to it, the number of waiting tickets was limited to 25% of the available seats. Following this, the reservation system was amended to fix the waiting list limit class-wise.

PRO Confirms

Naval Agrawal, PRO of the Bhopal Railway Division under Madhya Pradesh, confirmed during a media interaction that earlier there was no fixed limit on waiting tickets. This allowed touts and unauthorised agents to book tickets illegally. Now, the waiting list has been capped as a percentage, class-wise. This new system will directly benefit genuine passengers.

What Impact Will It Have?

Now, the waiting list in any train will not go up to 250-300. If there are 100 seats in AC First Class, a maximum of 100 people will be given waiting tickets. After that, tickets in that class will not be issued for the respective train. This will curb the practice of getting tickets issued and then getting them confirmed through unofficial means. At the same time, the crowds caused by those travelling on waiting tickets will also be controlled.

This Rule Will Not Apply To

This new rule on the limit of waiting tickets will not apply to concessional tickets or government travel warrants. This means that persons with disabilities, those travelling on medical quota, defence personnel and other eligible persons will continue to be given priority as before.