Rlys roots out illegal softwares blocking Tatkal ticket booking
   Date :19-Feb-2020

Rlys roots out illegal so
 
 
NEW DELHI :
 
MORE Tatkal tickets will be available for passengers now as the railways has weeded out illegal softwares and arrested 60 agents who would use them to block such tickets, a top official said on Tuesday. Railway Protection Force (RPF) Director General Arun Kumar said the cleansing operation means Tatkal tickets would be available for passengers for hours now, compared to a minute or two earlier after the booking opens. Officials explained that illegal softwares such as ‘ANMS’, ‘MAC’ and ‘Jaguar’ would bypass the IRCTC’s login captcha, booking captcha and bank OTP to generate tickets, while a genuine user has to go through all these processes.
 
The booking process for a general user usually takes around 2.55 minutes, but those using these softwares could do it in just around 1.48 minutes, they explained. The railways does not allow agents to book Tatkal tickets and over the past two months, the RPF has nabbed around 60 illegal agents who were booking tickets through these softwares, making it virtually impossible for others to get Tatkal bookings. “As of today, I can say that not one ticket is being booked through illegal softwares.
 
We have plugged all the issues that we had with the IRCTC website and also nabbed most of those who were top operators of the software,” the RPF DG said at a press briefing. With the arrests, Kumar said most of these illegal softwares, which used to generate business of Rs 50 crore-100 crore annually, have been blocked. The IRCTC’s ticket booking section reflects the impact of the railway action as it shows a jump in the availability of Tatkal tickets across the board.