Press Information Bureau
Government of India
Ministry of Railways
08-July-2015 18:33 IST
Government of India
Ministry of Railways
08-July-2015 18:33 IST
Minister of Railways
Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu Inaugurates Three Passenger Amenity Projects
Namely, e-Ticketing Hindi Website, Paperless Unreserved Ticketing on Mumbai
Suburban through Mobile Phones and Destination Alert Service in Rajdhani and
Duronto through SMS.
Fulfilling yet another
commitments of the Railway Budget 2015-16, the Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu inaugurated three
passenger amenity projects namely, NGeT (Next Generation e-Ticketing)
Hindi Website, Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through Mobile Phones for Mumbai
suburban (Western Railway Network) and Destination Alert Service in
Rajdhani and Duronto through SMS at a programme held at Rail Bhawan today.
The persons present on the occasion included Chairman Railway Board Shri A. K.
Mital and other Railway Board members. The paperless ticket on Mumbai
suburban was inaugurated through video-conferencing between Rail Bhawan in
Delhi and Western Railway Hqrs. in Mumbai.
Referring to his
Railway Budget announcements, the Railway Minister said that today with the
launching of a new service portal for booking e-Tickets in Hindi for Railway
passengers, an important Railway Budget commitment. He also said recently we
have taken some other passenger friendly initiatives like launch of SUVIDHA
class of trains which are dynamic fare based premium trains and automatic fare
refund system in case of cancellation of a train. We have also taken steps to
improve Railway freight income by way of adoption of new freight incentive
schemes. We also observed Rail Yatri Pakhwada recently, which was one of the
biggest public outreach events in the history of India and helped develop
connection with around seven million people across the country. The Senior
Railway Functionaries interacted with the public during this fortnight and
worked for resolving their problems. Many new projects were commissioned
during this period and the entire Railway machinery was galvanised. These steps
are probably something unprecedented. We must work for the development of the
organisation. The Minister thanked media persons who carried along with
them the total concept of Rail Yatri Pakhwada and made the people’s
participation a reality which is very important. The Minister said that People
and we must work together to make it all success.
The Minister said that
railways have always been conscious about passenger amenity and as a fallow up,
design of coaches has been improved with cost economy. Punctuality, comfort of
Railway passengers have always been our priority. Railway Budget
announcements are being translated into reality. Referring to the
paperless ticket concept, the Railway Minister said that this has successfully
worked in Chennai Subrban Railway Network and now it has been launched in
Mumbai Subarban Railway Network. Similarly, destination alert in Rajdhani
and Duranto trains which has been launched today are very useful services for
the passengers. The Railway Minister pointed out that all these IT
initiatives are in line with the digital India concept of Hon’ble Prime
Minister Shri Narender Modi.
Referring to the most
ambitious Railway project of Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Railway Minister
pointed out that the Cabinet has recently approved the revised cost estimate
for this project of Rs.81459 crore. The Minister also pointed out that
Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India has awarded contracts worth
more than Rs.15,000 crores in recent months which is a remarkable progress and
which is much more than the total works awarded by the same organisation in the
last six years.
Speaking on the
occasion, Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K.Mital, said that within 132 days,
64 budget commitments have been met. Paper less ticketing for 130 km Western
Railway distance covering 35 stations, SMS alert service in Rajdhani and
Duronto, e-Ticketing in Hindi are remarkable steps taken by Indian Railways and
these amenities can be extended to other sections of the Railways in future. Today
Hindi Portal of e-ticketing has been inaugurated and we can switch over to
other languages very soon. There are 37 lakh daily passengers on western
Railways and we will try to cover our MST holders also under the paperless
concept.
Additional Member (C&IS), Railway Board Shri Mohammad Jamshed gave the
welcome address. Ms. Vandana Nanda, MD, CRIS, the IT arm of Indian
Railways was specially present on the occasion.
NGeT (Next Generation e-Ticketing) Hindi
Website
Indian
Railway's E-ticketing System www.irctc.co.in is one of the most widely used
'Government to Citizen' services operational in the country. It caters ·to over
8.5 lakh passengers daily who can reserve berths in trains without leaving
their homes.
The launch of Hindi
version of www.irctc.co.in will facilitate E-Ticketing portal services for a
large section of Hindi speaking population of our country. As a consequence,
E-Ticketing service should become more popular and user friendly. This is a significant
step forward in fulfilling the Minister of Railways' Budget announcement of
multilingual e-ticketing portal.
This is one of the
first e-commerce portals made available in Hindi which has a large user base
spread all over the country and beyond.
The salient features
of the Hindi web-site are given below:
·
All
pages, information, navigation steps, guidelines, alerts & updates, error
messages and feedback form are now available in Hindi.
·
All
Dynamic information relating to accommodation availability, ticket details,
journey planner etc. will be displayed in Hindi.
·
Electronic
Reservation Slip (ERS) and cancellation slip will be printed in Hindi.
·
Citizens
who only know Hindi can now easily navigate on the E-ticketing website and
perform booking and cancellation transactions, view their transaction history
and conduct enquiries.
Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through
Mobile Phones
Centre
for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has developed a paperless Unreserved
Ticketing feature in Mobile Application "utsonmobile" both for
Android and Windows platforms. This will eliminate the need for printing of
Unreserved Tickets on ATVMs at the stations. User can download 'App' from
Google Play Store or Window Store free of cost.
This
service is being rolled out on the Churchgate - Dhanuroad Suburban Section of
Western Railway covering 35 stations over 123 kms. distance. For paperless
ticketing, GPS co-ordinates of suburban railway tracks on the Churchgate –
Dhanuroad Suburban Section, plus 30 meters on either side of the tracks
have been earmarked as Geo-Fencing area within which no ticket booking is
allowed in order to ensure that passengers have ticket before commencing the
journey.
The
application provides necessary on-screen alerts to guide the passenger during
the booking process. Payment for the ticket is done through the "Railway
Wallet" feature in the "App". After booking the ticket, the
passenger will get the ticket confirmation screen which contains limited information
of the ticket. The paperless journey ticket will be stored in the local mobile
application database in the encrypted form which cannot be tampered with. The
passenger has to start the journey within 1 hour as per policy for suburban
sections. Ticket booked in paperless mode cannot be cancelled in order to
prevent claiming of refund after travel.
The
ticket has distinct colour scheme everyday and it is embedded with Quick
Response (QR) code. It cannot be forwarded to another mobile or edited or
printed. The old invalid tickets will be removed from the mobile device through
a sync feature in the 'App'.
For
the purpose of ticket checking, the application has various features such as
colour scheme, show ticket features, secret code of the day, booking time of
the ticket and scrolling of legend "IR UNRESERVED TICKETING". In case
of mobile in disconnected mode, it will be checked through QR Code.
Destination Alert Service
Destination Alert is a
free value-added service to the travelling passengers to alert them about
arrival of the train at their respective destinations. It is targeted towards
all passengers whose destination comes at night between 11 PM and 7 AM. Our aim
is to relieve the anxiety of such passengers. This service involves sending an
SMS to a passenger 15 minutes before the train is expected to reach his/her
destination during night hours (23:00 to 07:00 hrs). Hence, the passengers are
required to provide their mobile number at the time of booking.
The service is being
introduced in all Rajdhani and Duronto trains.
(Photographs of the
event are available on PIB website pib.nic.in)
****
AKS/MKV/MN/DK
