New Delhi: In spite of several steps taken by the Railway Ministry to stop the illegal business of procuring railways tickets for reserved accommodation, government statistics have revealed that the number of such suspected Malafide accounts has been increasing every year.
Government statistics available with ETV Bharat said that during the year 2019-20, the total number of personal user Ids deactivated was 1120236 which increased to 1162493 in the year 2020-21.
A senior railway ministry official said that the practice to weed out suspected users is regularly followed, based on various investigations and analyses carried out by IRCTC in coordination with CRIS and Railway Protection Force (RPF).
Government statistics revealed that the number of deactivated IDs was 114737 in 2018-19, which went up to 1120236 in 2019-20 and 1162493 in 2020-21. The official said that the personal user Ids are deactivated on the pattern or series noticed in the user Ids involved in CRIS, RPF, and vigilance reports.
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"Search is also conducted on all the user Ids which are booking all 6 tickets in a day or two and then similar looking Ids are identified," the official said. The official further said that those user Ids which have been continuously booking all six tickets in Tatkal continuously for last more than 3 months are identified and the tickets booked with the name on the user Id and passenger are compared and then similar series are found out and deactivated. "
The offenders are booked under the provisions of Section 143 of the Railways Act, 1989. People get their seats reserved online through Passenger Reservation System (PRS). The PRS is a nationwide online passenger reservation and ticketing system. PRS handles reservations, modifications, cancellations, and refunds, reserving over 1.6 million seats and berths and handling more than 10 crore total transactions per day, added the official.
