The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will make it mandatory for users to link their Aadhaar numbers and login IDs while booking train tickets under the Tatkal quota in order to make the process fair and glitch-free. The move will bar people from booking multiple Tatkal tickets simultaneously, which affects genuine users.
"Indian Railways will soon start using e-Aadhaar authentication to book Tatkal tickets. This will help genuine users get confirmed tickets during need," Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently said on X.
"The Ministry of Railways, Railway Board, hereby notifies that the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) be allowed to perform Aadhaar authentication, on a voluntary basis, to establish the identity of ticket-checking staff, crew members and passengers, using Yes/No or eKYC authentication facility," noted a Gazette notification dated May 27, 2025.
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An IRCTC official told PTI recently that the Indian Railway has deployed Artificial Intelligence-based advanced technical solutions to curb unauthorised ticketing practices. The system detects and deactivates such user IDs before they can disrupt the booking system.
As per the news agency, the move is already making progress as the creation of new user IDs on the IRCTC platform dropped from 60,000 to 65,000 per day to just 10,000 to 12,000. IRCTC has also blocked 35 million fraudulent user IDs, the official said.
"Let's presume that a person named A approaches an unauthorised agent to get a ticket booked from Delhi to Agra. The agent will use several disposable email IDs (using domain names available on Google) and mobile numbers to create, let's say, 30 profiles on the IRCTC platform," the officials told PTI while explaining the process.
The email ID becomes invalid, the profile, however, remains after authentication, which is used by unauthorised agents to book a ticket for a person. Hence, the agents have 30 attempts to book a ticket for that one person.
Public outcry over Tatkal booking issues
Several people have raised issues they face while booking the Tatkal tickets from the IRCTC website, with most recently Dr A. Velumani, the founder of Thyrocare, calling it "betrayal". Dr Velumani shared a viral image on his X account, which noted, "Tatkal booking on IRCTC has become a joke. Seats show available, but the moment it turns 10 AM, the site hangs. By 10:03, all seats are gone - even in remote routes. And then at 10:04, the site suddenly becomes smooth again, as if nothing happened."
