IRCTC Stops Online Ticket Booking! Only Cancelations are allowed
IRCTC has stopped online train ticket booking after the trains have come to a halt. The online portal of IRCTC has allowed only cancelation of online tickets Through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), lakhs of passengers booked e-tickets and had to cancel the tickets due to lockdown. The Railway Ministry has now placed a rake on online train ticket booking. Now, only booked ticket can be cancelled. All the passenger trains were cancelled due to the lockdown, but on the online train ticket, a fee of Rs 15 to 30 was charged on each ticket which was not returned. This has happened twice with the country’s millions of travellers. The Railway Ministry has banned the booking of tickets on the official website of IRCTC.
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IRCTC official Website can only be used for Ticket Cancellation
The lockdown will continue till May 3 in the country, but now the booking of online tickets has been banned till further notice. Now only tickets can be cancelled on the website of IRCTC but no booking will be done. Apart from this, trains which used to be more crowded, many passenger trains including Rajdhani, Shatabdi can take longer time to operate. Even after relief in lockdown, railways will not take an immediate decision on the operation of trains.
Three Million Tickets were booked Till April 30
By April 30th; around 32 lakh railway tickets were booked across the country, which will now be cancelled due to lockdown extension. Despite cancelling around 32 lakh tickets, railways bagged about 4.50 crore rupees. These were collected in the name of convenience fee on each ticket which is not refundable. However, due to the extension of the lockdown period, the ticket cancellation charge will not be recovered. Due to the cancellation of these tickets, the Railways will surely suffer a huge loss of billions.
Ticket booking Stopped due to Problem of Convenience Fee
From 14th to 30 April, 32 lakh passengers of Indian Railways had booked tickets from IRCTC website. Irrespective of sleeper or AC class, the convenience fee was charged as prescribed by the Railways. A convenience fee of Rs 30 was charged for each ticket in AC class. The rationale behind this charge was that the transaction is done through the website and the bank, hence the Convenience fees was not refundable. To avoid the passengers from multiple booking and cancelations of tickets, IRCTC has banned booking of tickets till further notice.
Ticket Booking may be closed till August:
The Advance Reservation Period (ARP) for booking of tickets is 120 days. The central government or the government of any state has not yet decided on increasing the lockdown again; so booking of tickets are banned till August. Those who have booked their tickets before August are given the option to cancel their tickets online.
Coronavirus cases Increasing Rapidly in India
The number of patients infected with the coronavirus is increasing continuously across the country. According to data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 1684 new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours and 37 people have died. After this, the total number of corona positive cases across the country has risen to 23,077, of which 17,610 are active, 4749 people have recovered or have been discharged from hospital and 718 have died. Eight new patients having test results as corona positive have been confirmed in Bihar. With this; the number of corona patients in the state has increased to 170.