IRCTC Tatkal ticket booking In an attempt to help travellers, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has decided to introduce new norms for booking Tatkal tickets, which are booked by those who want to travel on an urgent basis. The Indian Railways reportedly made this provision for online booking of Tatkal tickets so that passengers can travel even during the peak season without any problems. Remember the days when booking railway tickets both online and at railway station used to be a nightmare? The ticket reservation facility of Indian Railways, which allows railway passengers to book accommodation in trains prior to their railway journey should not be misused by touts. To prevent misuse, Indian Railways says it has implemented several checks and procedures in its bid to strengthen the reserved ticketing system. Here are 20 measures that the national transporter says it has taken to strengthen the reserved ticketing system online:

The new IRCTC norms for booking of Tatkal ticket are given below:

1. Now, the booking for AC Tatkal tickets will start from 10 am, while non-AC tickets can be booked from 11 am. Travellers have to book the ticket a day before their scheduled travel date.
2. In case your train is more than three hours late, you can claim complete refund of fare and Tatkal charges.
3. You can also claim full refund if the train’s route is diverted and you dos not want to travel on that route.
4. The new rules also ensure to claim refund on Tatkal tickets if the train’s route is diverted and the boarding station/destination or both are not on the diverted route.
5. You can also claim full refund if accommodated in lower class and do not wish to travel in that class.
6. If you have no problem travelling in the lower class, you will be refunded the difference of fare and Tatkal charges.
7. You can book through computerised Passenger Reservation System (PRS) on first come first served basis.
8. You should know that there will be no refund on the cancellation of a confirmed Tatkal ticket unless you cancel a waitlisted or RAC ticket at least 30 minutes before the scheduled departure.
9. A Tatkal ticket will reportedly be treated as confirmed if a confirmed reservation has been given to one RAC or a waitlisted ticket holder up to the final preparation of charts.
10. Irrespective of number of railway passengers, Indian Railways has set the standard form filling time of passenger details in passenger detail form online at 25 seconds.
11. In order to carry out payments, minimum time check of 10 seconds will be provided to users.
12. Indian Railways has set 5 seconds as minimum input time for CAPTCHA on passenger details page and payment page.
13. Also, CAPTCHA is provided at Login page, Passenger detail page and Payment page by the national transporter.
14. As per railways rules, only two Tatkal tickets can be booked for single user ID in Opening Tatkal, which is from 10:00-12:00 hrs.
15. In a duration of one month, up to 6 tickets can be booked by a user from one user ID. However, if the user ID is Aadhaar verified and one of the passengers is Aadhaar verified then up to 12 tickets can be booked by a user in a month.
16. Except return journey, only one tatkal ticket in a single session is allowed by Indian Railways.
17. Also, the national transporter allows only 2 tatkal tickets per IP address between 10:00-12:00 hrs.
18. At one point of time, a user can have only one login session active.
19. Indian Railways does not allow quick book functionality (single page for booking tickets) between 08:00-12:00 hrs.
20. As per railways rules, a user can book only 2 tickets in Opening Advance Reservation Period between 08:00-10:00 hrs.
21. At one point of time, a user can do only one login either from multiple windows of same browser or from different browsers.
22. Indian Railways has implemented Dynamic Field name on Passenger page.
23. For Net Banking, the national transporter has also made One Time Password (OTP) mandatory for all banks.
24. Also, Indian Railways print QR Barcodes on Electronic Reservation Slip.
25. Indian Railways randomly asks additional security question from user after passenger input page related to user personal information, e.g. user name, email, mobile number, check box etc.
26. In order to prevent cornering of tickets at the time of opening of Tatkal and Advance Reservation Period bookings, Indian Railways does not allow agents to book tickets between 08:00 AM to 08:30 AM, 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM and 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM
27. Indian Railways has made Aadhaar Card mandatory for agents registration.
28. For suspicious user IDs, time check violation attempts and for bookings done in first second of opening of ARP and tatkal bookings, exception reports are generated. Moreover, after analysis, such IDs are manually deactivated.
29. In the e-ticketing system, Indian Railways has implemented multi layer security with deep defence.

It may be noted that the IRCTC and the State Bank of India (SBI) have jointly launched a debit card to incentivise passengers and to make them opt for online ticket booking. The SBI card, known as Railway Debit Card, will allow people to go for cashless transactions while booking the railway tickets.