NEW DELHI: Indian railways is all set to make Aadhar based ticketing compulsory as part of the transformation of ticketing by migrating towards cashless, paperless ticketing with the launch of app based ticketing by May 2017.
The passenger and freight action plan for 2017 unveiled talks about providing comfort and a pleasurable journey experience through induction of new LHB Rakes(about 2300 coaches in 2017-18), adding comfort features to coaches, improvement in catering and converting 25 stations to Digipay mode in 2017-18 by digitising entire station transactions.
The Aadhar based ticketing is being initiated to check mass bookings done by agents and railways hope that it will help in checking touts.
“Fulfilling travel needs by scaling up the new train products like Humsafar, Antyodaya, and Tejas. Meeting demands surges through adequate special trains and coaches, A new policy for rail tourism including development of Hill Railways through partnerships besides several new Tourist Friendly Packages,” said the plan.
For improving earning through freight, it says that freight services and rationalised tariffs to expand the freight basket and more commodities like bulk cement, steel products to be taken out of restricted list for containerization.
Railways also plan to offer long-term contracts with freight customers, end-to-end solutions, rationalisation of weighment policy, timetabled trains with premium on assured transit time (50 paths to be carved out in 2017-18) and procurement of specialised rolling stock for sectors like automobiles.