Hindi removed from English version of IRCTC online ticket booking portal

Terming the move as 'imposition of Hindi' on non-Hindi speaking people, in July this year, the KKDRUA petitioned the Railway Board and IRCTC, demanding removal of Hindi names in the website.
Station names appearing in drop-down menus under ‘book your ticket’ in the home page of the website will only have the English language. (Screen shot of the IRCTC website)
Station names appearing in drop-down menus under ‘book your ticket’ in the home page of the website will only have the English language. (Screen shot of the IRCTC website)

CHENNAI: After a stiff opposition from a section of rail passengers in Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country, the Railways removed the Hindi language from its English version of IRCTC online ticket booking website on Wednesday.  

Official sources in the Centre of Railway Information System (CRIS), an IT wing of the Railways, which manages the railway ticket booking portal told Express that the Hindi texts of station names and other general instructions in irctc.co.in have been removed.

“Station names appearing in drop-down menus under ‘book your ticket’ in the home page of the website will only have the English language. The station names will not appear in Hindi. However, the Hindi version of the IRCTC will continue to function as how it was earlier,” said an IRCTC official.   

The official added that general instructions and other promotional messages appeared on the homepage before and after the ticket booking also will only have the English language. In May this year, CRIS has upgraded the IRCTC website so as to make faster the ticket booking and also provided additional feature enabling the passengers to check the probability of confirming berths without logging into the website.

Since then, when passengers were keen to know the station names on the website, the names of stations in the drop-down menu appeared in Hindi language and English along with station codes. In addition, messages carrying the disclaimers and advertisements popped up after ticket booking appeared in Hindi.
Even as the IRCTC has dedicated Hindi version for ticket booking, the inclusion of Hindi texts in English website has irked rail passengers in Tamil Nadu and other parts.

Terming the move as “imposition of Hindi” on non-Hindi speaking people, in July this year, the Kanniyakumari District Railway Users’ Association (KKDRUA) petitioned the Railway Board and IRCTC, demanding removal of Hindi names in the website.

Referring to the official language's rules, 1976 (as amended, 1987), the KKDRUA secretary Edward Jeni in his complaint claimed that Tamil Nadu which was categorised under region ‘C’ was exempted from the use of Hindi.

According to section 3 of the official languages rules 1976, communications from a Central government office to state or Union Territory in region ‘C’ or to any office (not being a Central government office) or person in such state shall be in English, said the association.It may be recalled that recently the Railways reinstated the use of Tamil and Malayalam languages in unreserved tickets.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com