Indian Railways has taken a significant step to make Tatkal ticket booking more transparent and accessible to common passengers. Now e-Aadhaar-based authentication is being made mandatory to book Tatkal tickets through the IRCTC account. The change will come into force soon and is aimed at - curbing fraud, prioritizing genuine passengers, and reining in ticket brokers.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav has confirmed that Railways is going to make the ticket booking system more secure and fair through e-Aadhaar authentication. Now only those users will be able to book Tatkal tickets, whose IRCTC account is linked with Aadhaar. Aadhaar-based OTP verification will also be required at the time of booking.

What will change with the new rules?

• Only Aadhaar-verified accounts will be allowed for instant tickets.
• Only verified users will get priority in the first 10 minutes of booking.
• IRCTC agents will also not be allowed to book tickets in the first 10 minutes.
• Aadhaar verification can be made mandatory even when taking tickets from the counter.

Why was this step necessary?

Currently, out of more than 13 crore users of IRCTC, only 1.2 crore are Aadhaar verified. Railways has decided that special surveillance will be kept on those accounts which are not linked with Aadhaar. If any suspicious activity is found in any account, it will be closed. This change is important in the direction of giving a fair opportunity to common passengers for instant tickets.

An interesting pattern emerged in Tatkal ticket bookings

An analysis of booking data by the Railways from May 24 to June 2 revealed some startling facts:

AC Category:

• An average of only 5,615 tickets were booked in the first minute.
• 22,827 tickets were booked in the second minute.
• In total, 67,159 AC tickets were sold in the first 10 minutes – which is 62.5% of the total online bookings.

Non-AC Category:

• 4% tickets (4,724) were booked in the first minute.
• About 66.4% of the tickets were sold in the first 10 minutes.
• About 12% instant tickets were booked even after 8 to 10 hours.

This data clearly shows how most tickets go out of hand in the first few minutes – and that's when automated tools are most abused. Railways is now using artificial intelligence and surveillance systems to curb this.

What action has been taken so far?

Railways have blocked 2.4 crore fake or suspicious IRCTC accounts in the last 6 months. This is a historic initiative to take the country's largest online ticket booking system in the right direction.