IRCTC's Tatkal Reservation Service: Sorry connection problems?

Since its inception,'tatkal' service has never lived to expectations of common travelers. Service can be used two days in advance of the departure of train (or date of journey). Time to begin the process of booking is 8.00AM. On public hue and cry, Railways restricted login of IRCTC agents from 8.00 AM to 9.00 AM. It has benefited people. Commoners were able to book 'tatkal' tickets during this period from their home. However, it is being noticed after shifting of Railway Minister Ms Mamata Banerjee to Kolkata that site is not working for people smoothly. Whatever the reasons but its true that nobody (commoners) is able to book a tatkal ticket from the site. There are long ques at Computerized reservation centers. Agents place their people in ques in front of reservation centres well before booking time. People may be seen standing in ques at 4.00 AM early in the morning. Probable reasons are listed below.

1. It is not known whether agents have again been permitted to book 'Tatkal" tickets between 8.00 AM to 9.00 AM (Agent login was banned earlier),

2. Site has several steps to complete for successful booking of tatkal tickets ( search of source & destination station names & codes, fetching of date from calender). It is a horrible experience to complete these steps. If you fail to complete one step, you can not move forward.

3. If you are lucky enough to reach to "List of trains", you have to wait for a long time for finding out the availability of birth. ( Your session may expire even within seconds during the process and you have to click the button "Click here for login"

3. I forgot to mention the message "Service is Unavailable" in between appearing frequently.

4. If you are fortunate enough to click "Book" button, there is no guarantee that you will be able to see the next screen. "Service is unavailable" is common phenomena to encounter.

5. Next hurdle is to reach to 'make payment' page after facing brave failures.Even your session may expires after clicking 'make payment' button.

6. You can reach Everest and slip back thousand miles. You may become happy after finding that you have been able to reach "Book" button so early (full quota available under 'tatkal') but you may end up either booking a wait listed 'tatkal ticket' or finding a "Regret/WL)" button staring at your face.

Is there not a need of a judicial probe in the functioning of the site? Probing agency may be asked to find answers to queries listed below.

1. Whether booking agents of IRCTC & commoners have same preveilages for booking a 'tatkal' ticket? How much time is taken by an agent in booking a 'tatkal' ticket and how much by a commoner?

2. Why there are several hurdles in booking a tatkal ticket? Are there no ways to book a ticket straightway supplying source/destination and train number etc. as done earlier before this beta site?

3. Why provisions are made for booking wait listed tickets under 'tatkal' quota? Why waitlisted tickets are not confirmed under 'general' quota?

Computerization of railway tickets reservation counters, provision of booking e-tickets and then concept of tatkal railway tickets has benefited railways passengers to great extent. Besides ease of booking, transparency and elimination of touts, it has helped in rooting out corruption from railways beyond one's imagination. However, news of irregularities has started pouring once again. As per the information from media reports, of the 9.5 lakh bookings made each day across the country, 30 per cent are done through the IRCTC portal and it has recruited approximately eight lakh agents to book e-tickets. One can just assume why all the tatkal tickets are exhausted within fifteen minute of commencing bookings when login gateways to the portal are not same for authorized agents and other people.

Touts or unauthorized agents

This time the touts or unauthorized agents have targeted tatkal tickets and worked out a simple strategy and it is alleged that it is being done with the connivance of some railways booking clerks. Modus operandi is simple. The gang of touts capture the reservation counters. They send their people much ahead of time who stand first in the queue everyday for tatkal tickets. It has been heard that unauthorized travel agents post their men outside the reservation counter (or in front of counter if counters are not in a locked building) either in the night or in wee hours. Bonafide passengers either fail to book tatkal ticket or have to contend with a waitlisted tatkal ticket. By the time the turn of a bonafide passenger comes, all the confirmed tatkal tickets are booked by the touts. When people fail to book tatkal tickets from the reservation counters, they are left without any option and forced to purchase tatkal tickets from touts and unauthorized agents. In addition to takal charges, agents ask extra money ranging Rs 300 to Rs 500 per ticket. The connivance of reservation clerks can not be denied in supporting touts as it shouldn't be easy for touts to manage tatkal tickets in big numbers without willingness of the reservations clerks. As per a report published in Times of India, dated July 6, 2010, railway officials raided at different reservation counters in Bokaro city during the past few weeks but couldn't succeed to nab unauthorized agents.After getting failed to nab unauthorized travel agents, railways officials now plan to install CCTV cameras at reservation counters to identify the touts and unauthorized travel agents.

Flaws in tatkal scheme

As the name of the scheme suggests this scheme was launched to make arrangement of tickets to needy passengers who has to travel due to some urgency. Earlier needy passengers had to bribe Ticket collectors or Ticket Checkers (TCs) in the running trains by paying some extra money. Tatkal scheme was launched to help such passengers so that they could travel by paying legitimate extra money. In the beginning, provision was made to book tatkal tickets at least four days prior to date of journey.However, this provision was misused and touts took advantage of time availability and booked tatkal tickets in other names as waitlisted ticket . As per the provisions of tatkal scheme, one has to forgo all or major portion of money used for ticket booking if he fail to travel for any reason but waitlisted tickets can be canceled any time with full refund barring reservation charges.There should not be any provision for booking waitlisted tickets as this help touts to extort money from needy passengers. In the current railway budget, time to book tatkal ticket has been shortened and one can book ticket two days prior to date of journey. However, tatkal tickets must be booked on the day of journey to serve the very purpose of the scheme.

Flaws in booking of tatkal e-tickets through irctc.co.in site

There is no denial of the fact that e-ticketing through irctc has made railway reservations more transparent and easy for common men than reserving tickets from manual or computerized official reservation counters. In fact, facility of booking etickets from home or office has virtually eliminated need for authorized travel agents to a great extent. IRCTC can do its business without any travel agent. Although IRCTC claims that irctc site is equally accessible to both travel agents and common men. However, a common man have only 2-5% chances of booking a tatkal ticket as site is rarely accessible to a common man between 8.00 AM and 8.30 AM. After 8.30 AM things become normal but tatkal tickets become either unavailable by that time or status becomes waitlisted. The important question is: Why there are different login gateways for common men and authorized travel agents? Is it to make site accessible to authorized agents between 8.00 AM and 8.30 AM? If so, why? Is IRCTC working for the benefits of travel agents or to serve the common men? These facts need to be verified by an independent agency to remove doubts raised by complaints being lodged by people.

Other issues related to reservations

There are lot of irregularities in the reservations being made in the running trains. It is not hidden from anyone that extra money is charged by TC in running trains. It can be stopped if information about vacant births is displayed in every coach on a small board and updated at regular intervals. Vacant births should be allotted first to RAC passengers and then to others.

Updates: Web based ticket agents are temporarily barred from getting access to tatkal booking from 8 am to 9 am after receiving complaints against them from people and reports of crashing of the site in the morning as soon as the booing commences in the morning. Railways has also barred IRCTC agents from having access to booking on first day of advance reservation period. This is a welcome step and it should be made a permanent decision. However, there are fears expressed by the people that site may be tempered to crash during the said hours to justify the agents login from different gateway as done in the past.

Few tips to help non-agents: One can try few things listed below to book a tatkal ticket.

1. If there is unusual delay in opening login or welcome screen with direct address (www.irctc.co.in) in web browser, one can try to open the site with a link "internet reservation" from Indian railways site (www.indianrail.gov.in). It works on several occassions.

2. When you are able to open "Plan My Travel" screen, if you are unable to fetch name of 'source' and 'destination' station, click the 'reset' button instead of "F5" or refresh button. Try to furnish initial four word of the station and wait for sometime. Site is usually slow between 8.0 - 9.0 AM.

3. Clock of the site and your system are usually different in showing time. Hence, click the "reset" button and then 'find the train' if you get the message "sorry you can book a tatkal ticket after 8.00 AM". Otherwise, you will repeatedly get the same message.

Way out?

There is no denying that a huge number of online users use online booking services of irctc and it's no easy task to handle numerous tasks involved in booking an eticket. However, issue may not be left unresolved and solutions have to be find out. Problem is similar to a problem faced by people in our colony few years back. Our colony have 80 households and one transformer of medium capacity to supply power to all homes. There was always problem of low voltage. Once we met Executive Engineer (Electricity) of the town. When we narrated the problem he asked our suggestions. We suggested him to install three transformers of moderate capacity at different points in the colony. He ordered the staff to comply and problem was solved for ever. Similar solutions are needed to deal with this problem. This is a public utility and requires more financial assistance from the railways. Several servers may be provided to irctc and reservations may be done dividing railway reservations in various small zones. Other solution may be grouping different trains like Rajdhani(s), Shatabdi(s), Garib raths etc.. To find better solutions, railways must setup a committee to find out solutions. Even these sites may be self sustaining if they adopt ad based models.