The tag line may be surprising for many but may resemble to situation for many.
Indian Railway is surely a life line of transportation in India, having network across India and operating day and night. The system of Indian railway makes it a one of the largest carrier of passengers in the world but at the same time without any accountability.
Accountability as to what??
Answer lies in “T&T”
Yes
Time and Ticket
I had experienced nightmares in both the cases and tried to bring the issues in front of the authorities many times but all these attempts, one answer was common “Accountability” was missing.
Indian Railway is perfectly accountable in publishing data related to cost of an individual’s journey which is borne by the Tax payers but in the form of “Are you aware that 43% of your fare is borne by the common citizens of the country? but is there any account for cost incurred to common citizens due to mismanagement of railway services like late running of train, lapses in ticket checking, reservation frauds, etc. The simple answer is “No”.
The issue of ticket reservation is bigger in magnitude because of the railway reservation rules which states that-
“the centralized Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of Railways and allotment of accommodation is done by the System without any manual intervention and confirmation your ticket depends upon the cancellation and on existing railway rules. In case the Final Charts have not been prepared, the Current Status might upgrade/downgrade at a later stage, the final status of your ticket will be available only after preparation of chart. So we request you to always check your ticket status before commencement of your journey. “
The above is the rule of Indian railway when you book a reservation of journey and i am not giving my own definition, the above rule has been provided by Indian Railway official in writing to me which was in response to my complaint.
So from the above statement it is very clear that even if you have booked confirmed/RAC/waiting ticket for your journey, the status of the booking might change anytime before journey and even a confirmed ticket can be changed to RAC/Cancelled without assigning any reason. So, only after chart is prepared the ticket, the status of ticket is finalised. So, it means that one has to wait till the preparation of charts. In order to know that the seat is confirmed or not.
I believe many regular passengers are not even aware of this rule, so was me, but one of the incident which took place with me, helped me to discover the story behind the reservation of ticket for rail journey.
The incident took place on 10th February 2019 when I booked my ticket to travel from Jhunjhunun, Rajasthan to New Delhi in train number 14022. At the time of booking i.e before 10th February 2019, the status was wait list (WL) no.5, on the travel date i.e 10th February 19, the status changed to RAC-66 at 07:43 A.M so I was confident that the status might change to “confirmed” or even if the status remain RAC I would be allowed to travel with half seat of side lower berth.
The train was scheduled for departure at 11:26 PM, so chart was prepared 4 hours before the departure which was around 7:30 PM and the booking status changed to W/L-35, instead of ticket getting confirmed from RAC, the W/L was increased. This was absolute shocker for me as I could not find any reason for such downgrade.
However, this downgrade added misery to my problem since it was Sunday and traveling with bus for entire night was not possible for me after a hectic day, so I decided to travel in the same train but in the “unreserved coach”. I went to the station and inquired at the ticket booking counter about this downgrade but the accountable department’s reply was “we don’t know, ask IRCTC”. I had to travel for 6 hours in a unreserved coach wherein I could manage to sleep on floor of the coach since it was completely full of passengers. After reaching New Delhi, I filed complaint on Indian Railways website about the entire incident, but the response from the Indian Railway was “Extraordinary”, just have a look in below screen shot:
The response from Indian railway was that, my PNR number is WRONG.
Could not imagine, that how Indian Railway officials denied their own record especially when the ticket was booked from IRCTC app and they are writing that I had given wrong PNR. Luckily I took screen-shot of the Indian Railway PNR inquiry status which matches with my PNR in complaint filed.
I complained at other levels too but then I was shown rule of Indian Railway which I had shared above made me anxious to share this valuable information especially to all the tourists who are planning trip within India and outside India through Indian Railways.
Don’t think that the confirmed ticket in hand means that the seat is confirmed, it can be Upgraded/Downgraded any time, so travel at your own risk and expense…..