There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel for millions of train passengers who have a hard time booking tickets on www.irctc.co.in.
The Indian Railways, says a top official, is gearing up to roll out next-generation e-ticketing from April this year, marking a ‘paradigm shift’ in technology, customer-friendliness and speed.
“While traffic on IRCTC has grown 10 times over the years, the system capacities have also undergone upgrades. But there has never been a paradigm shift, as we were only tweaking and augmenting the systems and technologies introduced in 2002. We are now investing about Rs.100 crore to launch next generation e-ticketing. It will, however, take a few months for the new system to stabilise, given its enormity,” Rakesh Tandon, additional member (IT) of the Ministry of Railways, told The Hindu on the sidelines of a conference here on Thursday.
Mr. Tandon said currently e-transactions to the tune of Rs. 50 crore took place on the IRCTC. While almost every technology company worth its salt was involved in the humungous project, it would still require a teething time of at least six months, as “not even big corporations have handled such a large system.”