Ticket booking through cells soon – Times of India

PATNA: Railway is drafting guidelines to launch its ambitious project to book tickets through cellphones from July 1. According to a Railway Board official, though online ticket booking is already available to the people across the country, the cellphone ticket booking scheme is the first of its kind in railways.

According to sources, the Railway Board has approved the scheme and the RBI has given mandatory clearance to it. According to a Board official, railways has made a slight modification in the newly-developed software to check misuse of the scheme. Railways intends to make this scheme simple for cellphone users. A customer is required to download the application to book his journey ticket through cellphone, he said.

To make the project viable and popular among common people, railways would set up kiosks at different locations to help commuters to book their tickets. The system is similar to e-ticket booking. However, Java- enabled handsets will be required to access Internet to book tickets, sources said, adding delivery of tickets could be made through couriers or those having own mail ID could get the booked tickets online.

According to an IRCTC group general manager, under the new system passengers will get a reservation message with full details of the ticket including PNR, train number, date of journey, class and other details. The message received on cellphone would be treated on par with the printout of e-tickets, known as electronic reservation slip (ERS), he said.

Sources said the detailed procedure for booking tickets through cellphones is available on the IRCTC website . Mobile rail ticket booking services are based on the web services model developed by IRCTC to enable the users of cellphones to access the web-based rail ticket reservation inquiry services similar to www.irctc.co.in, IRCTC group GM said.