As similar to airlines, railway passengers are likely to get the status of seats available for booking a particular train as Indian Railways is planning to make the reserved charts public, a source in the ministry said Thursday.
Senior officials of the rail ministry have been instructed by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal to make the reservation charts public with the help of the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) in order to combat complaints of railway passengers regarding the availability of train seats.
The sources said Goyals instructions came after he received complaints from railway passengers regarding wait-listed tickets on certain routes, leaving them with no other option but to approach the TTEs. They say the TTEs then offer them vacant seats which could have been offered to them when they were booking tickets.
Usually when a passenger books a seat on airlines’ website, it shows the seating layout or the seating diagram with the booked seats in a different colour so that he or she can notice the number of seats still available and can be booked. In airlines, passengers can select the seat as per convenience and paying capacity,but for this national transporter this will be a step which will be explored later, sources said.
“As of now, we have to to make the reservation status public so that passengers can see the status of booking of a particular train. Like in airlines, it will show passengers who are booking the seats the ones that are already booked, marked in a different colour. This can be prepared through PNR and Choosing seats will be the next option,” sources said.
But as per statement made by senior Officials of the ministry, making the reservation details public could be a security issue and a bulky process.Unlike in the airlines,railway passengers board and de-board at every railway stations, that leads to change in the status of bookings.
In the computerised Passenger Reservation System (PRS), confirmed berths or seats are allotted on the first come, first served basis till the availability and subsequently Reservation Against Cancellation (RAC) or Waiting List tickets are issued. The status of RAC or Waiting List tickets gets automatically updated with cancellation of confirmed berths or seats in addition to unutilised reservation quotas.
For the ease of waitlisted and RAC passengers, Indian Railways has introduced Handheld Terminals that allow TTEs to update the occupancy status of a running train on a real-time basis. This increases the chances of a waitlisted or RAC ticket getting confirmed in a running train as well.
