New Delhi: IRCTC is making it mandatory for all account holders to provide Aadhar data when they are purchasing tickets online on tatkal after the window opens.
This is to prevent the ticket crisis in long-distance trains and to stop middlemen. Through its different railway zones, customers at Indian Railways daily buy 12.5 lakh tickets.
IRCTC believes there are numerous fake account holders in this world’s Actually, more than 13 crore accounts are currently under suspicion.
The Aadhar mechanism might put a stop to this malpractice to a certain extent. In the last 6 months, IRCTC has blocked 2.5 crore fake accounts.
IRCTC now plans to leverage AI to check the validity of the accounts. The recent data about tatkal ticket purchases first raised the suspicion. Daily, a total of 2.25 lakh tatkal tickets are purchased by passengers.
From May 24 to June 2, in the first minute after opening the tatkal window, 5615 tickets were sold out of 1.08 lakh tickets in the AC class.
In the second minute, 22,827 tickets were sold on average. A total of 67,159 tickets were sold in all AC classes in the first 10 minutes.
In the non-AC coaches, 4724 tickets were sold in the first minute after the tatkal window opened. It increased to 20,786 in the second minute.
IRCTC was convinced about some discrepancy or foul play from these data only.
The fake account theory gained ground after that. IRCTC found that only 1.20 crore of its 13 crore account holders have Aadhar data.
Who owns the remaining accounts, or whether one person is running multiple accounts, is not clear to IRCTC.
In the last 6 months, 2.5 accounts were blocked from where an excessive number of tickets (more than normal) were blocked. Another 20 lakh accounts have been identified as suspicious.
IRCTC had decided that only those having Aadhar data LinkedIn to their IRCTC accounts will get priority for online tatkal booking after the window opens.
Even authorised agents will not be able to buy tatkal tickets in the first 10 minutes.
IRCTC admits that even this might not be fail-proof. An unholy nexus of middlemen can open mule accounts using the Aadhaar data of others. However, this mechanism could be a start to rectify the challenge.
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