Railways launch bar coding of unreserved tickets

New Delhi, March 2: Railways on Tuesday, March 1, launched bar coding system for unreserved tickets to prevent revenue leakage and bring transparency in the ticketing system.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said bar coding of unreserved tickets, one of the rail budget 2016-17 commitments, will be launched in three stations of the city - New Delhi, Old Delhi and Nizamuddin.

The IT-based bar coding project has been introduced as a pilot project at nine ticket counters in these stations. Railway Board Member (Traffic) Mohd Jamshed noted that there were cases of misuse of unreserved tickets by unscrupulous elements who used to get the tickets printed illegally.

"The circulation of unauthorised tickets was affecting Railways' revenue. The bar coding system will prevent such malpractices," he said.

The official stated that in order to check fraud, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has decided to print encrypted QR code on unreserved tickets through thermal printers.

The bar coding feature includes details like ticket number, stock number, fare, source station, destination station, number of adults, number of children, train type, class code and date of journey, that are printed in the form of encrypted QR code.

Jamshed explained that whenever a staff checks the ticket, he can scan the encrypted QR code and validate the information printed on the ticket to prevent any fraud. In this technology, printing will be done through thermal printer on thermal stationery only.

Therefore, fraud by taking out carbon copy of the ticket or erasing of data and printing of other information on it will be detected by scanning its QR, the official noted. The bar coding will be extended to more stations and gradually it will cover reserved segment also, he added.

PTI