New Tatkal Rules 2012 come into effect from today

Indian Railways have brought into effect new Tatkal Scheme from today in an order to curb the menace of Unauthorised Railway Agents and the problems in getting Tatkal Tickets. Below are the highlights of New Tatkal ticketing Policy

Under the new amendment the booking of Tatkal tickets will start at 10.00 hours on the previous day of journey from train originating station instead of 0800 hours at presenm.

NO authorised agents, including agents of IRCTC and RTSAs/RTAs will be allowed to book Tatkal tickets from 1000 hours to 1200 hours from counters as well as from Internet.

A verification call may be made for the bookings done between 10:00 am to 10:15 am to verify userid, pnr, passenger mobile number and passenger details.

While some zones will have separate counters for these tickets, others will issue Tatkal tickets from the same counters; they will provide only Tatkal tickets from 10am-10.30am, said a senior railway ministry official.

Internet Bandwidth has been increased from 344 mbps to 450 mbps

Web service agents have been permitted to book only one Tatkal ticket per train per day on internet after 12.00 A.M.

Individual users are permitted to book only two tickets between 10.00 A.M. to 12.00 A.M.  Only two tickets can be booked per IP address between 10-12 AM. IP address check has helped in preventing multiple bookings from same office complex/internet café etc.

Single session per user ID check has been implemented. With this step, a user on irctc.co.in will be able to open his account for booking of e-tickets only once. Multiple sessions with single user ID cannot be opened thereby enabling maximum users to access website and reduce congestion.

An IT-Anti Fraud Squad has been created at Internet Ticketing Centre to detect cases of fraud and fraudulent activity and also for constant cyberspace surveillance to detect possible threats to the system.

The server capacity will be increased from 3.5 lakh bookings to about 5 lakh bookings per day in about four months, which will eventually be increased to about 8 lakh bookings a day.