Governance Initiatives of Indian Railways: Overview

Governance Initiatives of Indian Railways: Overview

Question: Three new passenger amenity projects have been unveiled as part of good governance initiatives in the railways sector namely NGeT, Paperless Unreserved Ticketing and Destination Alert Service. Provide an overview of each.

- The Indian government has launched 3 passenger amenity projects namely NGeT or Next Generation e-ticketing website, paperless unreserved ticketing through mobile phones for western Railways and Destination Alert Service

Next Generation e-Ticketing Website

- The e-ticketing system caters to more than 8.5 lakh passengers daily who can reserve berths online

- Launch of the Hindi version will facilitate e-ticketing for a large section of Hindi speaking people

- This is in line with the budget announcement of multilingual e-ticketing portal

- This is one of the leading e-commerce portals which has a massive user base spread over the country and beyond

Its salient features are as follows:

- All pages, information, guidelines, navigation steps, alerts and updates, error messages and feedback form are available in Hindi

- Dynamic information pertaining to accommodation availability, ticket detail and journey planner will be displayed in Hindi

- Electric reservation and cancellation slip will be printable and passengers can now performing booking and cancellation transactions in Hindi

Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through Mobile Phones

- Centre for Railway Information Systems have developed a paperless unreserved ticketing feature in Mobile Application”utsonmobile” for Android and Windows platforms

- This will eliminate the need for printing unreserved tickets on ATVMs at stations

- Service is being launched at Western Railway covering 35 stations over 123 kms

- GPS coordinates of suburban railway tracks have been earmarked as Geo Fencing areas within which no ticket booking is allowed to ensure passengers possess tickets before starting the journey

- Application provides on-screen alerts for guiding the passengers through the booking process

- There is a Railway Wallet feature in the app

- Paperless journey ticket is to be stored in local mobile application database in encrypted format and it cannot be tampered with

- Tickets booked through this mode cannot be cancelled

- This ticket has a distinct colour scheme embedded with a Quick Response code which can be forwarded to another mobile or edited and printed

- For ticket checking, application has numerous features such as show ticket features, colour scheme, secret code of the day, booking time of the ticket

Destination Alert Service

- Destination Alert is a free service which is value added to provide information to passengers about when they reach their destination

- It is targeted towards passengers whose destination comes between 11 pm and 7 am.

- SMS is sent to the passenger 15 minutes prior to reaching the destination through this service

- Destination Alert Services are available for Rajdhani and Duronto trains.

Facts and Stats

- Suvidha class of trains have been launched which are dynamic fare based premium trains and automatic fare refund system

- Steps to improve railways freight income through new freight incentive schemes have been adopted

- Rail Yatri Pakhwada is one of the largest outreach events for connecting close to 7 million persons across the country

- Passenger amenities have been improved through many IT initiatives

- Cabinet has also approved the revised cost estimate for project estimated at INR 81,459 crore

- Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India has awarded contracts more than INR 15,000 crore in recent months

- Within 132 days of governance, 64 budget commitments have been reached in the Indian Railways sector