Are you aware of the train ticket cancellation and refund rules on confirmed, waitlisted and RAC (Reservation Against Cancellation) tickets for sleeper and AC classes? E-tickets – or tickets booked online – can be cancelled online till chart preparation, according to IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), the e-ticket service provider for Indian Railways. According to IRCTC’s website – irctc.co.in, for trains starting up to 12 noon, chart preparation is usually done the previous night. The refund would be credited back to the account used for booking online tickets, after deduction of applicable cancellation charges. Remember: E-ticket cancellations are not allowed at railway counters.

Here are 10 things to know about train ticket cancellation and refund rules:

Cancellation Of Confirmed Ticket

1) Confirmed ticket cancelled up to 48 hours before the scheduled departure of train: Ticket cancellation charges will be deducted at Rs. 240 for AC First Class/Executive Class, Rs. 200 for AC 2 Tier/First Class, Rs. 180 for AC 3 Tier/AC Chair car/AC 3 Economy, Rs.120 for Sleeper Class and Rs.60 for Second Class. Remember that cancellation charges are levied on a per passenger basis.

2) Confirmed ticket cancelled within 48 hours and up to 12 hours before the scheduled departure of train: Ticket cancellation charges will be 25 per cent of the fare subject to the minimum flat rate mentioned above.

E-Ticket Cancellation

4) E-tickets cannot be cancelled after chart preparation. No refund of fare shall be admissible on the ticket having confirmed reservation in case ticket is not cancelled or TDR (ticket deposit receipt) not filed online up to four hours before the scheduled departure of the train, according to the IRCTC website.

5) In case of cancellation of trains, for e-tickets, an automatic refund is granted. Filing of TDR or ticket deposit receipt is not required.

Wait-Listed, RAC Ticket Cancellation

6) RAC (reservation against cancellation) train tickets or wait-listed train tickets cancelled up to 30 minutes before the departure of train – refund will be granted. No cancellation charge is levied and full fare is refunded to passengers holding confirmed, RAC and wait-listed tickets if the journey is not undertaken due to late running of train by more than three hours of scheduled departure, subject to the condition that the ticket is surrendered prior to actual departure of train.

7) For a PRS (Passenger Reservation System) counter ticket, in case of train cancellation, a refund is permissible within three days excluding the scheduled day of departure of train.

Cancellation Of Tatkal Ticket

8) Remember no refund is granted on cancellation of confirmed Tatkal train tickets.

9) If a train is running late by more than 3 hours or train is cancelled, you can file TDR for claiming refund, according to IRCTC.

Partial Cancellation Of Train Tickets

10) If there is any partial cancellation of ticket, please ensure that a fresh e-reservation slip (electronic reservation slip) is printed separately as done for the original ticket, according to the IRCTC website.

The Railway Protection Force or RPF of Western Railway has developed and introduced a mobile application for the security of women commuters travelling between Churchgate and Virar suburban railway stations.

The free app, ‘Eyewatch Railways’, launched last month, has been developed by RPF of Western Railway in collaboration with Eyewatch Technologies Pvt Ltd. It can be downloaded on an android phone from Google Playstore and on iPhone from the Apple iStore, said chief PRO of Western Railway Ravinder Bhakar.

This app helps women commuters in times of emergency, as they can immediately send out their location, video and audio which can instantly be viewed on the emergency response control centre at the RPF Control room at Mumbai Central, he added.

“The eight chosen guardians, doctors and security personnel also receive the alert SMS and automatically a phone call is made to the them (guardians). It functions only when a commuter uses it while on railway premises,” he added.

The application has been customised for the Railway Protection Force (RPF) to dispatch an immediate response by sending RPF personnel from the nearest station to help the Women Commuters, the official said adding, “Over one lakh passengers have downloaded the app so far.”

According to Mr Bhakar, this app has audio/visual stream facility as well, through which Eyewatch automatically records up to 60 seconds pre-alert audio and 20 seconds post-alert video.

“In addition to it, it displays the current battery (status of the user’s phone), network signal strength, blood group, type of emergency along with other important data that can be viewed on the web-based Eyewatch Control Center located at the RPF Control Room,” Mr Bhakar said.

Indian Railways has increased the monthly cap on tickets booked on the ICRTC portal from six to 12 for Aadhaar-verified passengers, officials said.

The move, which came into effect on October 26, is believed to be an innovative way for the railways to encourage passengers to link their Aadhar numbers to their online booking accounts on IRCTC.

IRCTC officials said passengers can continue to book up to six tickets a month without validating their Aadhaar cards.

If the number goes beyond six, the Aadhaar number of the user and one of the passengers should be updated in the IRCTC portal, an official explained.

Users on the IRCTC portal have to click on Aadhaar KYC under the ‘my profile’ category and update their Aadhaar number.

A one-time password (OTP) will be sent to the mobile number linked to Aadhaar and should be entered for verification.

In addition, the Aadhaar number of any one of the accompanying passengers should also be updated under the master list . This will be validated through an OTP.

Users can store the names of verified passengers accompanying them on the ‘master list’. This should be done before starting the process for booking more than six tickets a month, officials said.

The move is expected to eliminate malpractices in ticket bookings as touts and travel agents cannot create fake user IDs anymore.

In the IRCTC portal, six passengers can be reserved on a single ticket under general quota while Tatkal bookings allow four passengers per ticket.

The railways had announced in December last year that registration of Aadhaar with IRCTC was mandatory to avail concessions from April 1, 2017, but dropped the idea after opposition from various forums.

Indian Railways has increased the monthly cap on tickets booked on the IRCTC portal from six to 12 for Aadhaar-verified passengers, officials said.

The move, which came into effect on October 26, is believed to be an innovative way for the railways to encourage passengers to link their Aadhaar numbers to their online booking accounts on IRCTC.

IRCTC officials said passengers can continue to book up to six tickets a month without validating their Aadhaar cards. If the number goes beyond six, the Aadhaar number of the user and one of the passengers should be updated in the IRCTC portal, an official explained.

Users on the IRCTC portal have to click on Aadhaar KYC under the ‘my profile’ category and update their Aadhaar number. A one-time password (OTP) will be sent to the mobile number linked to Aadhaar and should be entered for verification.

In addition, the Aadhaar number of any one of the accompanying passengers should also be updated under the ‘master list’. This will be validated through an OTP. Users can store the names of verified passengers accompanying them on the ‘master list’. This should be done before starting the process for booking more than six tickets a month, officials said.

The move is expected to eliminate malpractices in ticket bookings as touts and travel agents cannot create fake user IDs any more.

In the IRCTC portal, six passengers can be reserved on a single ticket under general quota while Tatkal bookings allow four passengers per ticket.

The railways had announced in December last year that registration of Aadhaar with IRCTC was mandatory to avail concessions from April 1, 2017, but dropped the idea after opposition from various forums.

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A 19-year-old student in Bhopal, studying for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), was tied up and gang-raped for three hours on Tuesday in the busiest part of the city by four men who took tea and gutka (tobacco) breaks in between. Prolonging the horror, the police allegedly sat on the woman’s complaint for hours and refused to investigate until she and her parents found two of the rapists and dragged them to the police station.

The first police officer the woman and her parents approached allegedly accused her of making up a “filmy” story. Sub-inspector RN Tekam has been suspended, said senior officer Dharmendra Singh, admitting an appalling 11-hour delay in filing a case. Today, five more police officers were suspended after Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, amid outrage and protests, met with senior officials.

The police have also been accused of keeping the crime under wraps because it took place on a day it was preoccupied with the Madhya Pradesh founding day celebration.

The woman was assaulted near the city’s Habibganj Railway station, and just about 100 metres from a railway police post. She usually took a train from the station to her hometown about an hour away, after her coaching classes for the IAS.

That evening, the police say, she decided to take a shorter route when around 7 pm, she was grabbed by one of the accused, Golu Bihari, who is out in bail in the murder of his daughter. Golu and his brother-in-law Amar Bhuntu were drinking when they spotted the woman and dragged her towards a deserted culvert.

The woman says she asked for clothes as hers were torn. Golu Bihari allegedly got clothes, but returned with two more men.

Till 10 pm, the four men took turns to rape the woman, say the police.

When she was finally allowed to leave, they took away her earrings, watch and phone.

The woman walked to a railway police post at the Habibganj station and called her parents – both in the security forces. The next morning, her father took her to a police station, and was redirected to two more.

When the family was returning from the Habibganj police station, the woman spotted Golu and Amar near the spot where she was raped. The family chased the two and handed them over to the police. Embarrassed, the police arrested the four rapists and are inquiring into the conduct of their own.

In another year, travelling on the Kolkata Metro network in the hot summer months will become a thing of the past — the city will get 14 trains with at least 112 advanced air-conditioned coaches from China, a senior railway official said.
These made-in-China coaches imported at a cost of Rs. 7.1 crore per coach will arrive by February 2018, the official told news agency PTI.

Kolkata Metro is hoping that it will soon be able to replace non-AC coaches with the new ones, at least in the existing north-south corridor.

The imported coaches will be fitted with high cooling capacity 30-tonne air-conditioners instead of the 22-tonne machines installed in some of the old coaches in the metro network. They will also come with eight intercom devices which commuters can use to contact the metro driver in case of emergency.

“These will be state-of-the-art AC coaches with comfortable seating and much like the metro trains run by the DMRC in Delhi. They will also have CCTV cameras,” the official said.

All trains on the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s corridors are air-conditioned.

Coaches that have been running for over three decades in Kolkata’s 27.22-kilometre-long south-north line have started showing their age with many of them needing constant repairs.

Every day, over six lakh people travel by metro in the capital of West Bengal, making it the second-busiest metro system in India after Delhi.

The China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation or CRRC will provide the coaches. On its website, the Chinese publicly traded firm claims to be the world’s largest supplier of rail transit equipment. CRRC reported revenues of $37.8 billion in 2015.

A 19-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped and raped by four men near the Habibganj Railway Station in Bhopal on Tuesday night. According to the police, all the four accused have been arrested.

The woman was returning home after attending a coaching class when she was kidnapped. The incident took around 10 pm on Tuesday, a Government Railway Police (GRP) officer said. The accused allegedly took the woman under a culvert near the railway tracks and took turns to rape her before fleeing, he added.

“They have been booked under sections 376 D (gang rape) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention),” the officer said, adding that further investigation is underway.

A case was registered at the GRP Police Station (Habibganj Railway Station), since on the basis of the complaint lodged by the woman, the area where the crime took place falls under their jurisdiction. The accused have been identified as Golu Bihari, Amar Chhantu, Rajesh, and Ramesh.

At least 10 passengers of the Himalayan Queen Express received injuries when the driver applied emergency brakes at the Gharaunda station in Haryana, railway officials said today.

The train was running at a high speed on Wednesday night, when the station master raised an alarm. The driver then suddenly applied the brakes. The injured were given first aid, but passengers protested the sudden application of brakes and demanded to know why the driver was speeding.

Angry passengers said that there would have been a terrible accident if he had continued to run at that speed. They blamed the Railways and demanded an inquiry into the matter.

“The train didn’t even stop on signal. It was out of control. When the driver suddenly applied the brakes, the train was filled with smoke. Some children lost their tooth but still, there are no arrangements of medical aid. No ambulance arrived,” a passenger said.

The Telangana government has sought intervention of the Union ministry of civil aviation to resolve the issue of alignment plans of the railways on airport connectivity in the MMTS phase-II.

The GMR Hyderabad international airport authorities are not agreeing to the alignment proposed by the railways up to a location near to the airport border. The officials are citing security issues.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently held a video conference with TS officials on MMTS phase II project under the Pragathi programme. The Central government has sent a note on the video conference. According to the note, land acquisition for MMTS phase II and funds to be given by TS to the railways were discussed.

The state government has said that the alignment has been finalised up to a location near to the airport and an independent consultant has been appointed by the state government to study the alternate options.

The railway officials said that this issue has been pursued with the state government and the airport authorities.

Central Railway has invited applications from eligible candidates for engagement as Apprentices ‘for imparting training under the Apprentice Act 1961 in the designated trades at Workshops/Units in the jurisdiction of Central Railway against 2196 slots.’ Recruitment will be done for 2196 posts available under Mumbai, Bhusawal, Pune, Nagpur and Solapur clusters. Applicants must be in the age group of 15-24 years as on 1 November 2017 (age relaxation norms can be found online). Job detail is available at official website rrccr.com.

‘The candidate must have passed 10th class examination or its equivalent (under 10+2 examination system) with minimum 50% marks, in aggregate, from recognized Board and also possess National Trade Certificate in the notified trade issued by the National Council for Vocational Training or Provisional Certificate issued by National Council for Vocational Training / State Council for Vocational Training,’ reads the official job notification.

During the training period, selected candidates will receive 70% of minimum wage of semi-skilled workers notified by the respective State or Union Territory during first year.

Candidates shall have to send online applications only.

‘Production of original documents, on the day of document verification is mandatory without which they will not be allowed to appear in the document verification. Certificates in languages other than English or Hindi should be accompanied by an attested translation in English/Hindi.’