A subsidiary of the Indian Railways, IRCTC translating into Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, supports the online ticketing operation, catering and tourism aspect of the former. With IRCTC online you can make your train bookings online after making your IRCTC train enquiry.
The IRCTC website churning up several lakhs of bookings per day makes it the world's second busiest website. Add to it its punchline 'lifeline of the nation'. When IRCTC opened up online ticketing, it immediately cut down the dependency on middle-men or agents in trying to procure a quick ticket. This saved regular passengers the discomfort of standing in long queues at a railway counter to buy a ticket. With the coming of IRCTC, you can get train frequency, schedule and tariff by just the click of a button. And subsequently the user can take his time to choose a better train, learn about it arrival and departure details and ultimately proceed to book his tickets. All you need to do is create your IRCTC login and tap into the Indian Railways vast network of trains. Now you can browse for more information such as IRCTC availability, trains running between stations before going ahead and make an IRCTC online ticket booking.
In order to curb the panic among those stuck far away from their homes, longing to make a return journey, the Indian Railways introduced 40 pairs of special trains beginning 12 September 2020 aboard which you can make an IRCTC reservation. Some of the prominent ones include Kota Dehradun Special that goes from Kota to Dehradun Trains on all days. Jabalpur to Ajmer, Prayagraj to Jaipur, Humsafar Special from Gorakhpur to Anand Vihar, Agartala to Deoghar, New Delhi to Indore Trains, Mysore to Jaipur, New Delhi to Prayagraj are among some of the special trains started by the Indian Railways to cater to the people who are stuck across different locations in the country and have no other legitimate way of making the return journey. These trains comprise daily, weekly and bi-weekly trains and it is possible to book any of these trains, subject to their availability, on the IRCTC website.
Yatra.com has tied up with IRCTC to assist you with your train ticket bookings and making sure they happen seamlessly. After booking a holiday at a destination, it makes it all the more easy to close your train bookings as well in the same platform. You can rely on Yatra's expansive trains search console that helps you select a train to and from your desired destination. You can use its elaborate filters to zero in on a train that best suits your budget and in the end helping you save plenty of time with your IRCTC train booking.
How to do your IRCTC Online Train Booking with Yatra.com
In light of the current COVID situation, the fare concession has been withdrawn till further notice for all categories of passengers except the four categories of Divyangjan and 11 categories of patients. In view of the health advisory and in order to discourage passengers from taking up any non-essential travel this has been decided as a special case that no concessional UTS and PRS ticket for all categories of passengers save for students and the already mentioned categories would be issued.
In order to make an IRCTC train booking, these are the steps you need to follow:
The new, improved IRCTC website is called IRCTC Next Generation. It shows you the whole gamut of trains running across the country complete with their schedule, train categories, days of operation and tariff. On this revamped website, you can make a more refined search by applying the filters. The dynamic interface makes it possible for you to make air ticket bookings, browse holiday packages, whether romantic, family, honeymoon or spiritual. Your options abound.
If you wish to make your IRCTC train ticket booking on a short notice, you can easily go for the Indian Railways Tatkal scheme. Under such a scheme you can make your booking whether online or offline (at the designate railway counter) one day prior to your date of travel. This IRCTC ticket booking window opens at 10:00 am a day before your date of journey for the air-conditioned coaches, and at 11:00 am a day ahead of your date of journey for sleeper coaches.
The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) website lets you track your train in real time. The National Train Enquiry System page comprises a tab called ‘spot your train' where you can do a search once you have entered your train name or number. This will lead you to an information page which gives you details like the distance covered by the train so far, the arrival and departure time from prominent stoppage stations, and an estimated arrival time at your chosen destination.
Meaning of IRCTC Waiting List TicketThis goes on to mean that you have been issued a ticket on a train that is already running to capacity. And just as passengers with confirmed tickets keep cancelling their bookings, your ranking on the waitlist keeps getting better, subsequently making it possible for you to get a confirmed train ticket.
Confirmation of IRCTC Waiting List TicketsThere is no assurance on whether or not a wait list IRCTC train ticket will get confirmed. This purely depends on the volume of cancellations that take place against confirmed tickets, and how that impacts your ranking on the wait list. In case it makes a substantial difference to catapult you into the RAC list (with no confirmed or reserved berth) when the train's chart is prepared, you will at least be able to board the train. Not to mention, you can always SMS 139 to IRCTC enquiry time and again to check the position of your wait listed ticket. But on an unconfirmed wait list ticket at the time of preparing a chart, you have the right to seek a full refund.
Any e-ticket can be cancelled online anytime before the chart is prepared. For the same, head to IRCTC's booked tickets link and select the ticket you would like cancelled. You need to confirm the cancellation online and the refund is then credited back to your account used for the booking. In case of a partial cancellation, you need to ensure that a new e-reservation slip is printed separately just the way it was done for the original ticket. If the cancellation is done more than 48 hours ahead of the train's scheduled departure, a flat cancellation charge of INR 240 is deducted for AC First Class/Executive Class, INR 200 for AC 2 Tier/First Class, INR 180 for AC 3 Tier/AC Chair Car/AC 3 Economy, INR 120 for Sleeper Class and INR 60 for Second Class. These are cancellation charges for every individual passenger. If you cancel your confirmed ticket within 48 hours to up to 12 hours prior to your scheduled departure, cancellation charges are 25% of the fare subject to the minimum flat rate mentioned above. For less than 12 hours to up to 4 hours ahead of the departure time to chart preparation time, it is 50% of the fare paid subject to the minimum cancellation charges.
IRCTC Tourism as Your Holiday PlannerA subsidiary of the IRCTC Next Generation, this tourism wing lets you book special train-based packages, air travel, theme-based holidays, nature and sightseeing tours, and of course, its speciality, pilgrimage tours to all the major pilgrimage spots in the country. The site is lauded for its runaway hit programmes like the Bharat Darshan Special Tourist Train, also called, Ramayana Yatra. You have the choice of viewing this detailed itinerary, explore the choice of trains, the package inclusions such as hotel stay and finalise your travel dates depending on the IRCTC availability.
IRCTC FTRIRCTC FTR has simplified the online booking of railway coaches for special occasions such as marriage party or group tour through a Full Tariff Rate. As per Indian Railways, you can now book special trains, coaches and saloons on a Full Tariff Rate or FTR, which means they can be booked through a single window booking system on the IRCTC website.
You could be an individual, a party, the government or an agency and you have the provision to book trains or coaches or saloons through the FTR route on IRCTC. Here IRCTC will make the booking online on behalf of an individual or group. IRCTC also levies a facilitation charge of 5% of your total fare for booking these special trains or coaches. Indian Railway will prioritise the booking of these special coaches and saloons on FTR over reserving extra coaches in order to clear the passengers on a wait list. Make sure you do the registration of a special train at least one month ahead and not more than six months of your date of journey. In case you are making a registration for a duration shorter than one month, you would then require a special permission from the CPTM of the zonal railways. The security deposit for such a booking is INR 50,000 per coach, and in case of special trains, you will be charged for a minimum of 18 coaches. Not to mention, the whole transaction needs to be carried out only digitally.
Presently, FTR booking is allowed for journeys kicking off from the stations of the Western Railway Zone alone. You can complete the registration process on the IRCTC website or at the UTS counter of the journey starting station. At the time of booking, the individual or the party needs to provide the booking type, the route and details of coaches. Post registration you are provided with a reference number and a registration amount. You need to make the payment against the reference number and this will generate your FTR number. Indian Railways needs to receive the said payment within six days of making the registration.
In case you wish to cancel your FTR booking or the railways decides to revoke your booking, the refund shall be processed through a manual procedure involving the Chief Commercial Manager. A party can book a maximum of 10 coaches through FTR in a single train on a single tour. You can, however, book a maximum of 24 coaches of an FTR train including 2 SLR (Seating-cum-Luggage Rake) coaches. The registration sum for a coach for a period of one week is INR 50,000. If your journey extends any beyond seven days, you need to pay an additional INR 10,000 per day, per coach.
IRCTC UTSIRCTC UTS stands for Unreserved Ticketing System that lets passengers of the Indian Railways buy unreserved tickets through the UTS mobile app. This is best suited for daily commuters and commuters on a short notice. The purpose of the mobile application is to eliminate the need to queue up at a counter to purchase unreserved tickets and make the process wholly digital. So all you need to do is download the Unreserved Ticketing System app and book a paperless ticket between two stations. Not only does it help with booking an unreserved paper ticket, it also lets you collect one at any of the automatic ticket vending machines anywhere in the country. If you happen to lose internet connectivity while booking such a ticket, the app lets you access the ticket even on an offline mode. You can make your payment towards the ticket through the Indian Railway provided R-Wallet (Railway Wallet) so that the entire transaction is completed digitally. These unreserved tickets can be booked on a bunch of suburban lines as well as a few long-distance routes. For instance, you can use your unreserved ticket at stations in Chennai, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.
Once you have downloaded the app, you need to register yourself, post which your R-Wallet is automatically created. You can now buy your unreserved ticket using this wallet and even recharge it as well by heading to the UTS mobile website. Additionally, the wallet can be recharged at any railway booking counter provided you do it in multiples of 100. Not to mention, you cannot recharge beyond INR 5000. Presently, you can buy platform tickets as well as journey and season tickets using this app. You can book your unreserved ticket only 15 metres away from the station. For journey tickets, the radius is 5 km from the starting station. While for platform tickets, the distance is 2 km from the departure station. However, these restrictions don't apply on the booking of season tickets. Of course, there is no provision of booking an advance ticket as the whole idea is to enable you to make your booking on the current journey date.
Your unreserved ticket is further sent to the app and you can use the 'show ticket' option to display the ticket at the time of checking. These tickets are not subject to cancellation and you need to commence your journey within an hour after the booking.
Important IRCTC terms:IRCTC | Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation |
Tatkal booking scheme | Booking train tickets on a short notice such as one day before the date of journey. |
Maximum tickets bookable online in a month by a user | Six |
Maximum Tatkal tickets bookable online in a month by a user | Four |
Benefit of updating Aadhaar on | Book 12 tickets instead of six in a month |
Maximum tickets bookable in a day from a user id | Two |
IRCTC booking window timings under general quota | 8 am to 10 am |
IRCTC booking window timings under Tatka | 10 am to 12 pm |
Popular IRCTC tourism packages | Bharat Darshan, North East Safari, Shirdi special, Dakshin Bharat Yatra, Shiv Hari Sai Darshan |
IRCTC Wait List | Tickets to a train that is already running full. Passenger cancellations can improve your chances of getting a confirmed ticket. |
IRCTC FTR | Full Tariff Rate lets you book special trains, saloons and coaches through a single window booking system |
IRCTC Next Gen | The revamped IRCTC website with added functionality |
IRCTC Retiring Rooms | Rooms available across railway stations that can be booked in case you have a long wait between trains. |
IRCTC UTS | Unreserved Ticketing System allows you to buy tickets on the very day of journey through the UTS mobile app. |
Train running status | The current status of a train, its actual departure time, distance covered so far and expected time of arrival |
-The capacity of IRCTC Next Generation site is touted to be 7200 tickets every minute as opposed to the former 2000 ticket per minute.
- IRCTC is perhaps Asia's greatest e-commerce site, clocking up a staggering 4 lakh bookings a day, leaving a certain Flipkart or Amazon far behind.
- IRCTC was the most searched term on Google India in 2014.
IRCTC is your treasure trove for everything trains, and now holidays, and it makes perfect sense to register yourself, and become its active user.
Q. How can I book my train tickets on Yatra.com?
Q. How can I change my user ID in Irctc?
Q. How can I print ticket from Irctc without login?
Q. What is current booking in IRCTC?
Q. How can I check my booking in IRCTC?
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Q. Can PNR get confirmed?
Q. How can I login in to IRCTC?
Q. How can I create an IRCTC id?
Q. How can I pay with IRCTC debit card?
Q. What is TATKAL booking in IRCTC and how it is done?
Q. What is the maximum number of IRCTC train tickets one can book at a time?
Q. What age is it compulsory to buy an IRCTC train ticket for children?
Q. What are the different quotas for IRCTC ticket booking?
Q. What is TDR in IRCTC
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Yatra Online, Inc is the parent company of Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd. which is based in Gurugram, India, and is India's leading Corporate Travel services provider with over 700+ Corporate customers, and one of India's leading online travel companies and operates the website Yatra.com. The company provides information, pricing, availability, and booking facility for domestic and international air travel, domestic and international hotel bookings, holiday packages, buses, trains, in city activities, inter-city, and point-to-point cabs, homestays, and cruises. As a leading platform of accommodation options, Yatra provides real-time bookings for more than 103,000 hotels in India and over 1,500,000 hotels around the world.
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