Railways reduces advance ticket booking window from 120 to 60 days
The Railway Ministry has reduced its advance reservation period of tickets from 120 days to 60 days, with an exclusion for the day of the journey, as per an official circular which comes into effect on November 1, 2024.
Apparently designed to reduce the administrative load and done away with the inconvenience of cancellation and verification of malpractices by travel agents, the circular came from Railways Director/Passenger Marketing-II Sanjay Manocha. However, clarifying that there would be no change in the limit for foreign tourists going up to 365 days, he wrote.
It would also not affect the bookings made before October 31, 2024. "All bookings done up to October 31 under the ARP of 120 days will remain intact", said the circular.
Even though the time limit for advance reservations was being reduced, cancellations of bookings made beyond the ARP of 60 days would be allowed, Railways said.
The ministry also clarified that advance reservation time limit will not be changed in the case of some daytime Express trains such as Taj Express and Gomti Express where lower time limits are already in force.
The Railways took challenged by a few complaints from the travelling public to launch its next-generation e-ticketing system on June 14, 2018, whereby users can enquire or search trains and check seat availability without login.
In addition, the new system allowed a user to change the font size throughout the website -- a facility that has proven to be a boon for the elderly and others with vision problems.
The ticketing system came with a new feature called 'My transactions' in which a user can view booked tickets based on journey date, booking date, an upcoming journey, and completed journey.
The new user interface also helped to navigate easily across the mobile, desktops, laptops, and tablets.
The next-generation e-ticketing system also enables a user to handle the payment option by selecting six banks as preferred banks. Also, once the payment is completed, the details of the booking are displayed in a user-friendly way.
Indian Railways is the world's fourth largest network where route length exceeds 67,000 kms and as many as 2.4 crore passengers travel in trains every day.
