New Delhi: Booking tickets could get easier now as an internal investigation has revealed that every day, 4,000 confirmed berths were hoarded by touts within one minute of the computer reservation system being thrown open to public.
According to a report in Indian Express, the probe found that the touts who sell tickets at a higher price to passengers in need, were exploiting a "facility" in the passenger reservation software which allows someone who has already purchased a ticket to alter journey details and book another train within seconds at the last moment.
"Touts would buy any ticket a day in advance and the next day, they would get ticket details changed. The booking clerk merely had to generate another PNR with the passenger details already fed into the system a day earlier. This took seconds," Ajay Shukla, Member (Traffic), Railway Board, told The Indian Express.
"We have now disabled this facility for the first hour after the system opens," he added.
The probe, launched after the Railways Ministry found a huge number of tickets being booked this way, also indicated that booking clerks and other insiders were involved in the racket. The report also claimed that after disabling the facility for the first hour, a sharp dip in the booking pattern across the country has been observed. "We believe those are genuine transactions by passengers altering their journeys," Shukla said.
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