IRCTC, has got an upgrade which will allow passengers to book tickets without any hassle, railway minister Piyush Goyal said, launching the upgraded version of the IRCTC website. In 2014, the Next Generation E-ticketing (NGeT) system was launched to provide seamless e-ticketing services - higher booking loads and better user interface, through IRCTC. In 2018, it was updated with personalised features like checking of train availability without the need to log in, probability of confirmation etc. This time, those features have been made easy to access.
Here are the new features:
1. Passengers will be able to book tickets, meal and accommodations at the same time.
2. Predictive entry suggestions using Artificial Intelligence will be given to the passenger when he is entering the station so that not much time is wasted to look for the station.
3. Refund status can be checked on your user account page.
4. Destinations can be saved under ‘regular’, ‘favourite’ tabs so that one can easily book tickets to those destinations.
5. Availability for all class will be displayed along with respective fares for all trains on the same page. Earlier each train seat availability and fares could be seen only after clicking on that train individually.
6. “A ‘Cache system’ has been introduced in the backend to provide availability status. This will avoid delays in loading availabilities.In case of waitlisted tickets, its ‘confirmation probability’ is displayed. Earlier this had to be checked for each waitlist status separately.
7. Availability for other dates can be toggled on the page itself.
8. The journey details will be shown also at the payment page so that if there is any error it can be rectified.
9. The website has in-built features for enhancing cyber security by using appropriate captchas.
10. It will also update seat availability real time.
At present, this e-ticketing website of IRCTC has more than 6 crore active users, using it to book more than 8 lakhs tickets daily. Around 83 per cent of the total reserved railway tickets are booked through this online system
