Indian Railways has increased the availability of Tatkal tickets by removing illegal software from the picture. Railway protection force (RPF) Director General Arun Kumar said the removal would make Tatkal tickets available for passengers for hours now. Illegal softwares were used to book a ticket in 1.48 minutes while the booking process for a general user usually takes around 2.55 minutes.
Illegal softwares such as ‘ANMS’, ‘Jaguar’, ‘MAC’ etc where used to bypass IRCTC login and booking captcha and bank OTP to generate tickets. The railways do not allow agents to book Tatkal tickets and over the past two months the RPF have arrested over 60 illegal agents who were using these softwares to illegally book tickets. These softwares made it impossible for the normal passenger who books ticket through the IRCTC website.
“As of today, I can say that not one ticket is being booked through illegal softwares. We have plugged all the issues that we had with the IRCTC website and also nabbed most of those who were top operators of the softwares,” the RPF DG said at the press meet.
The RPF have identified more than 317 user IDs which were involved in illegal tatkal booking and have blacklisted them.
The new action taken by the officials will make sure that the Tatkal tickets are open for hours before it runs out. The RPF have been closely monitoring agents who were suspected to be involved in this malpractice for a while before they finally made a move on them.
