Indian Railways plans to revamp passenger reservation system: Report

The Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of the Indian Railways is all set for another revamp, a move that can help weed out 'malafide users' who crowd the system with fake IDs, a report by Livemint stated.

The work to revamp the Railways' PRS will start later this year after a Grant Thornton's report becomes available, a person aware of the development told Livemint. The firm is in talks with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to study the existing ticket booking system and suggest improvements.

The development is expected to make life easier for the common man, who has faced uncertainty when it comes to the reservation of railway tickets with many tickets kept aside for bureaucrats, politicians, and others, especially for last-minute travel. While this changed after the introduction of e-ticketing, which is facilitated by the IRCTC, quite often the server buckles under pressure.

IRCTC has more than 100 million registered users, of which 76 million are active users.

The revamp of the e-ticketing service will focus on two key things, a) enhancement of the server to handle large numbers of transactions seamlessly; b) software checks to weed out malafide users, Livemint reported.

Raising the capacity of the PRS to handle large transactions at one time will require strengthening of the core application and infrastructure by providing new functionalities, the report said.

Building checks in the software will weed out malafide users who put pressure on the system by taking advantage of loopholes to carry out transactions, Livemint stated. This mostly happens during Tatkaal booking, when such users bulk block emergency tickets.

Apart from strengthening the PRS, the revamp would also focus on upgrading the IRCTC website and servers to handle more traffic with minimal turnaround time, the business daily reported.