As part of a series of initiatives to make train ticket booking experience a good one, the ministry of Railway has announced to make Aadhaar number mandatory for booking travel tickets online. This initiative is largely taken in order to prevent agents from booking multiple bogus tickets only to sell them at a higher price later.
Prior to this, the government had made Aadhaar card mandatory for senior citizens to receive concession on train ticket booking from April 1st. Currently this is going on as a trial basis for 3 months. Government can also regulate other concession available with Aadhaar number, however, any such announcement hasn’t been made in this regard yet.
Along with making Aadhaar mandatory for ticket booking, the government is working on making the whole system a lot more transparent and cashless. Over 6000 PoS machines have been distributed to enable cashless transactions over the counters and over 1000 automatic ticket vending machines have been dispatched to various railway stations and ticket booking stations.
A senior official from the ministry of railways, stated in his statement that Aadhaar number will be required for registration on the website. Once that is done, the department can track the number of tickets booking via the account and it will help trace people booking tickets with fake IDs or without the IDs. Despite taking a number of such measures, agents blocking bulk of tickets to sell them at a higher price later on, has become a big issue in front of railways.
Digitization of the whole process is one of the key aims for railways. It is also planning to connect the hill stations across the country via train and proving more comforting experience by enhancing customer service and catering.