You will understand now as in why you don’t get your tickets confirmed anytime in IRCTC. Not even Tatkal guarantees you confirmed tickets. All thanks goes to IRCTC and its scam that takes only 60 second to cover the availability of the trains.
Actually the story goes something like this, the touts in order to earn extra money and make “illegal” profit buy bulk tickets of relatively less popular train, a day in advance. Later when the computer reservation is thrown open to the public, they take full advantage of those few minutes and alter the ticket details and swap the tickets for popular trains like Rajdhani, Duronto and other long distance train. All this process hardly takes a minute and the fraudulent practice is performed.
Ajay Shukla, Member (Traffic), Railway Board said, “Touts would buy any ticket a day in advance and the next day, they would get ticket details changed. The booking clerk merely had to generate another PNR with the passenger details already fed into the system a day earlier. This took seconds.”
An investigation has proved that around 4000 confirmed berths are booked in this manner by the illegal touts and also the involvement of clerks and insiders helps ease the way. The Railway ministry that is running on loss for last few years is planning to take action against the touts. With the help from RPF the situation may come under control.
A very strange fact is that those who have been caught under such fraudulent practice have been released on a bail of merely Rs.3000
Let’s hope that the new law and order,at least reduces if not completely put an end, the hassle of booking a ticket!
Do you have any memory of how you had to cancel your trip because of unavailability of ticket, Now you know why?