Indian Railways Launches ‘utsonmobile’ App for Paperless Unreserved Ticket Booking

Indian Railways has launched a mobile application for booking unreserved tickets on many suburban lines and some long distance routes. It can be utilised for buying unreserved tickets at any station in Secunderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu launched the app through remote video link from New Delhi, and the function was held at Platform No. 10 of the Secunderabad railway station on Wednesday.

The app called ‘utsonmobile’ is supported by Android and Windows operating systems and is available on Google Play Store and Windows Store.

After downloading utsonmobile, a passenger has to register his/her mobile number through the smartphone or by visiting the website utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in.

After successful registration, a passenger’s Railway Wallet (R-Wallet) is automatically created and it shows zero balance. The wallet is to be used to buy tickets and the website can be used to recharge the R-wallet. Passengers can recharge their wallets from any railway booking counter as well and it can be done in multiples of Rs. 100. The maximum recharge limit is Rs. 5,000.

This initiative has been taken by the Railways to provide seamless ticketing facility for passengers and to achieve the objective of paperless tickets. Currently, the app can be used for booking journey tickets, season tickets and platform tickets. Platform ticket booking is allowed for some selected stations only. Passengers are allowed to book tickets only beyond 15 metres from the station or railway track. The booking of journey tickets is allowed within the radius of 5 km of departure station. Platform tickets can be booked up to a distance of 2 km from the journey station. There are no such restrictions for the booking and renewal of season tickets. No advance ticket booking is allowed, so the journey date has to be the current date.

Passengers can book tickets by following these steps:

Log into the app and select ‘Book Ticket’ option.

Select ‘Normal Booking’ option on the next screen.

Enter the source and destination stations.

Select number of passengers, class, and train type in the next screen.

The ticket type and payment type will be ‘Journey (J)’ and ‘R-Wallet’ by default.

Finally select the ‘Book Ticket’ option.

The ticket is delivered in the app itself, and passengers can travel without its hard copy. The ‘Show Ticket’ option can be used at the time of ticket checking. The paperless tickets are not allowed for cancellation and journey should commence within one hour after booking.

Find more information about the stations where these tickets can be booked, here.

Featured image credit: Belur Ashok/Flickr