NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways has changed the timings for booking AC and non-AC Tatkal tickets. Now Tatkal AC tickets could be booked from 10 am to 11 am, while the non-AC ones could be booked from 11 am to 12 pm. The new booking schedule would come into effect within a few days.
The railways is also thinking of providing refund for Tatkal ticket cancellation and the percentage of refund is still being worked out.
“We are considering refunding certain percentage of the ticket fare in case of Tatkal cancellation. We will have a timeframe and if a passenger refunds within that timeframe, he will get refund accordingly,” said railway member (traffic) Ajay Shukla.
The railways is also planning refund on cancellations of premier train tickets and such refunds could go up to 50 per cent of the ticket amount.The IRCTC website had recently registered three crore hits a day, slowing down the server in the process. The new booking timings would reduce hits during peak hours.
To make e-ticket booking during Tatkal hours easier, the IRCTC had recently launched IRCTC Lite site.
The Indian Railways has also decided to rationalise the dynamic fare pricing by starting a slab system, allowing people to book premium train tickets from reservation counters and providing a window of 30 days for advance booking instead of the present 10 days.
Premium trains were launched during the fag end of the UPA regime by the then Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge to help in last-minute travel plans.
But in the last one year, it has come to fore that prices skyrocketed with increase in demand. At times, 3AC fare was more than 2AC.
The Rail Ministry has now decided to do away with demand based pricing and have a slab system, whereby fare would remain the same for a particular number of seats despite increase in demand.