The IRCTC is planning to upgrade its system that will allow booking of over 7,000 E-Tickets against its existing capacity of about 2,000 tickets per minute. The Railway PSU plans to spend about Rs100 crore on this.
IRCTC Managing Director RK Tandon made a detailed presentation to Railway Minister CP Joshi about future plans to the Railway PSU, which provides catering and hospitality services besides ticketing. Besides Joshi, Railway Board chairman Vinay Mittal and CRIS Managing Director Sunil Kumar were also present. CRIS, the technical arm of railways, is involved in the upgrading of the IRCTC website.
The upgradation of IRCTC’s platform for E-Ticketing is expected to come as a relief to passengers who face hardship, particularly in booking tickets under Tatkal quota. According to IRCTC's annual report for 2011-12, the number of tickets booked through its website during the year had gone up to 11.61 crore as against 9.69 crore tickets booked previous year.
Railway officials said the upgrading of website is a continuous process as the average booking per day has been increased from 3.67 lakh in 2012 to 4.15 lakh now. There are about 31 crore reserve tickets being booked in a year out of which 55 per cent tickets are sold through windows. While 37 per cent tickets are
booked online, eight per cent are being booked by
ticketing agents.
Former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had announced in his Rail Budget 2013-14 that the booking capacity will be enhanced to 7200 tickets per minute with the development of next generation software for the e-ticketing site.