The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation will install five high-capacity servers, imported from Singapore, to speed up its e-ticketing operations.

The initiative to import five new servers from Singapore comes close on the heels of introduction of two new high-speed servers by IRCTC to Passenger Reservation System (PRS) earlier this month, which have doubled the peak-time efficiency for booking tatkal tickets at the railways’ ticketing website.

New Delhi: The timings for booking Tatkal tickets in AC and non-AC classes will change from Monday as the Railways has staggered the schedule to reduce the load on the ticketing site and booking windows.

Currently, the booking under Tatkal scheme opens at 10am on the previous day of journey from train originating station. “It has been decided that from June 15, timings for booking of Tatkal tickets will be staggered for AC and non-AC classes to 10am onwards and 11am onwards, respectively,” said a senior railway ministry official.

IRCTC has joined hands with SpiceJet and GoAir to enable wait listed travellers to cancel the train ticket and book a flight on either airline by paying some incremental fee.

As per sources concerned with the deal, the tie-up happened over a month ago. It is also speculated that IRCTC would be tying up with other private airlines in the future.

Fares for first class and AC class in passenger trains besides freight charges will be increased by 0.5% from June 1 as new service tax will come into effect.

"Currently, 3.708 per cent service tax is levied on train fares for AC Class, First Class and freight. This will go up to 4.2% from June which means the rise is only 0.5%," said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Catering to the growing demand of pilgrims travelling to the cave shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi, Indian railways will run a new bi-weekly train for Katra from Kalka from June 2.

The inaugural run of Kalka-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra train will be from Kalka at 1.40 PM today and from Katra at 9.30 PM tomorrow, said a senior Northern Railway official.

Indian Railways has suffered losses of about Rs 100 crore due to the ongoing Gujjar agitation which has forced cancellation and diversion of as many as 326 Mail and Express trains on Kota-Mathura route so far.

Besides, there have been cancellations of about 1.9 lakh tickets since May 21 on IRCTC website, causing a huge logjam for customers to access the site.

The government might be busy projecting Indian Railways as the vehicle of economic growth, but the national transporter is yet to catch up on project award and implementation.

Analysts tracking the infrastructure sector say, the Railways, with the exception of the dedicated freight corridor project, is witnessing weak tendering.

The CAG has indicted the Indian Railways for not employing strict checks and balances in its dual freight policy (DFP) for transportation of iron ore that led to a financial loss of nearly Rs 30,000 crore to the organisation between May 2008 and September 2013.

The DFP policy provides for categorisation of iron ore in two categories — for ‘domestic consumption and ‘other than domestic consumption’ (exports). The freight rate for latter category of iron ore was three times that of the former.

As of today, rail commuters can use a mobile phone app to obtain tickets in the unreserved category as the Indian Railways takes forward its initiative for paperless ticketing.

“We have launched a mobile-based paperless unreserved ticketing application,” said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Aiming at providing passengers more facilities for booking tickets online, IRCTC is planning to offer a new service of 'baggage insurance' for them. Under this, a customer will be offered additional services like insurance coverage for baggage while booking e-tickets on the IRCTC website.

As per the offer, the passenger can claim the insurance money in case of lost or theft of the baggage. The goods like laptop, mobile phone or any other valuable articles will be covered as part of the travel insurance package.

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