Initiative to book rail tickets at cyber cafes

New Delhi, Sept 21: Standing in huge queues in a railway booking center or looking for a travel agent for booking your rail tickets may soon be a thing of the past! In a measure which is expected to revolutionise railway ticketing in the country, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) today announced an initiative for instant booking of tickets online at your neighbourhood cyber cafe.

The IRCTC today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SIFY limited, for online booking of railway tickets at over 3400 iWays cyber cafes across 154 cities of the country through cash payments.

While a pilot project for booking of tickets at 10 iWays in Delhi has started today, the facility of online ticketing will start in about 500 iWay cyber cafes across the country within the next six months, the MD and CEO of SIFY limited Raju Vegesna said at a press conference here today.

Under the new initiative, one no longer has to travel to a railway booking counter, stand in long queues or book tickets through a travel agent. All one needs to do is visit a neighbourhood Sify iWay, where the cafe administrator can book the railway ticket online. The customer will pay cash against the ticket and collect the ticket printout. All this at a nominal charge of Rs 40 per ticket (on which one can reserve seats for up to six persons), including railway reservation charges of Rs 25 per ticket plus Rs 15 browsing charges to be paid to Sify.

In case of ticket cancellations, the customer will follow the standard cancellation process of the IRCTC, after which the customer gets cash against the cancellation.

Managing Director of the IRCTC, P K Goel said, ''The new initiative will revolutionise the way railway ticketing is done, with never-before convenience with neighbourhood access for the common man. The underlying principle for launching the initiative is "rather that the customer coming to us, we should go to the customer".

The path-breaking initiative is aimed at making railway e-ticketing easier and convenient for us customers across the country. for, they no longer have to worry about using credit cards or having net banking facility which is restricted to those having a computer at home or offices. Instead, they can simply make the online booking and make convenient cash payments at Sify's iWays.'' Till now, online railway ticket bookings on the IRCTC site has been available to the customers who either have a credit card or net banking facility, limiting the number of people who could actually use this convenient facility.

''Usually about 25000 people use the e-ticketing facility per day. However, the figure has not witnessed much increase perhaps because of the low level of internet connectivity in the country. So, we wanted to find a means so that the large number of Indians without a credit card or a net banking facility be able to make online rail reservations by paying cash. Hence, the decision to launch this initiative,''Mr Goel said.

UNI