Railway passengers soon will be able to book
your rail ticket four months in advance instead of two months at present.
In his Railway budget speech in Lok Sabha,
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday said advance reservation period has
been extended from 60 days at present to 120 days to check the rising menace of
touts.
Asked when the decision will be implemented,
Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha told reporters later that it would
come into force in the next fortnight. Incidentally, the advance reservation
period earlier was 120 days but was reduced to 60 days about two years back, a
step the railways had then said was initiated to also check the tout menace.
Member Traffic Ajay Shukla said advancing the
reservation period once again to 120 days would discourage the touts as it
involves more cancellation charges.
Mr. Prabhu announced introduction of
‘operation five minutes’ scheme under which ticketless passengers can get
regular tickets within five minutes of entering station.
Provision of modified ‘hot buttons’, coin
vending machines and ‘single destination teller windows’ will drastically
reduce the transaction time, the Minister said.
For the differently-abled travellers, a
special initiative is also being launched whereby they can purchase
concessional e-tickets after one-time registration. It is also proposed to work
towards developing a multilingual e-ticketing portal.
“We will move towards crediting all refunds
through the banking system,” the Minister said.
Noting that in Central, Western and Southern
Railway suburban sections, a pilot project of issuing unreserved tickets on
smart phones has already been started, he said the facility would be
progressively introduced to all stations. Automatic ticket vending machines
have been installed at many stations.
Source
: The Hindu
