Long queues to book tickets 120 days in advance
People throng major reservation centres such as Dadar and Kalyan Wednesday morning, when new rule kicked in.
3 min read
Chaos and interminable queues were the order of the day at railway reservation centres across the city on Wednesday, the first day that railway bookings were extended from 60 days to 120 days before the date of journey.
While passengers lined up from early morning at major railway reservation centres such as Thane, Dadar and Kalyan, the railways reported tremendous response from passengers making online reservations as well, with the number of advance bookings on the IRCTC website nearly doubling the daily average.
At railway stations’ reservation centres, as the crowds grew larger and restive, the authorities deployed security officials. At Thane railway reservation centre, there were nearly 3,000 people in queue at 7 am, the line snaking all the way outside the building and down the pavement towards the railway station.
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The Ministry of Railways has said that it is introducing an increase in the Advanced Reservation Period with a view to control black marketing of season tickets. Railway authorities claim that because of the new scheme of 120 days, passengers will not face issues with touts — the only drawback is that citizens would have to plan their journeys well in advance.
“Earlier one could make railway bookings 60 days before the date of journey. In that scheme, agents and touts could easily invest their money and do bulk bookings, leading to black-marketing of tickets. However under advanced booking over a 120-day period, agents, brokers and touts will not be able to invest money for such a long period,” said a Railway official.
Because of the huge response, working hours of the computerised reservation centres were also extended for the next two days. Reservation centres will now be open till 10 pm for the next two days, informed a Central Railway official.
“Today was the first day of opening of ARP. Around 1,50,000 people had booked their tickets until 2 pm today. At Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), Dadar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT), Thane and Kalyan, officials witnessed huge crowds for booking under ARP. We had deployed the Railway Protection Force (RPF) across all these computerised reservation centres,” said Chief Public Relations Officer (CR) Narendra Patil. “Through IRCTC also, the number of bookings doubled today.
The average booking on IRCTC earlier was 5 lakh a day, and today it has received 10 lakh bookings on long distance trains from across the country,” said an official from IRCTC.
mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com
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