Train reservation chart set to be prepared 8 hours before departure

A senior official of the Ministry of Railways said that under the current system, passengers arriving at stations from distant areas would have little clarity on their waitlisted ticket’s status while leaving their home.

“Now, passengers will get the update on waitlist status well in advance. There were many complaints regarding the chart preparation time. The passengers coming from remote areas or suburbs of major cities to the Railway Station for taking long distance trains had to go back many times because of non-confirmation of the waitlisted ticket. Now, such passengers will get time to make alternative arrangements,” said the official quoted above.

The official said that Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has directed the board to start implementing this move in phases to avoid disruption.

Vaishnaw also reviewed the upgradation of the passenger reservation system, which is expected to enhance the ticket booking capacity by over 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute. This will be an increase of around five times from 32,000 tickets per minute in the current system.

“The ticket enquiry capacity will increase ten times from 4 lakh to over 40 lakh enquiry per minute time. Further, OTP-based authentication will be done for Tatkal bookings from the end of July, 2025. The authentication should be done using Aadhaar or any other verifiable Government ID available in the user’s DigiLocker account,” said the official.