The Indian Railways has presented some new standards with respect to booking of tickets by means of Tatkal administrations, which enables travelers to book tickets immediately in emergency situations.
Through computerized Passenger Reservation System, one can book Tatkal tickets on first come, first served basis. With high demand during the season, the seats get booked as soon as the portal opens, especially on popular routes. Additionally, technical glitches on the IRCTC website are quite normal.
If you wish to keep away all these troubles before the summer rush starts, you should get accustomed with the new rules that are introduced by national transporter.
- Passengers can book tickets a day before the travel. The bookings will start at 10 AM for AC coach and 11 AM for general coaches.
- Is the train fails to leave within three hours of the scheduled time, the passengers can claim complete refund of the train fare and Tatkal charges.
- A passenger can also claim refund, in case the train changes its route and the passenger is not willing to take that route.
- Refund can also be taken if a train changes its route and the destination station of the passenger is not in the new route.
- If a passenger is shifted to a lower class and he is not willing to travel in lower class, then refund can be claimed. In case the passenger agrees to travel in lower class, then the passenger will be paid back the difference amount.
Avoiding Misuse
Lately, the Railway Ministry has incorporated some new features in the tatkal ticket booking system in order to avoid misuse of Tatkal system. No refund if confirmed tatkal ticket is cancelled, no seat allocation, no modification and many other features have been added to the system.
In addition to this, authorized tatkal agents will not be able to book tickets during the first 30 minutes, as the portal opens.
For avoiding fraudulent bookings through software, Captcha has been introduced in registration, login and booking page. So, passengers can easily book the tickets online, however the payment gateway is not included in the timeframe. In case, passengers wish to make an online booking they will be required to fill in one-time password. For any kind of railway enquiry including PNR status, train running status, time table, fare table, route map and other details can be checked from the IRCTC website.