Book a ticket in style, just send an SMS

KOLKATA: Forget toiling throughtedious hours for a railway ticket. Just send an SMS. The Railways will be onlytoo glad to deliver the ticket at your doorstep.And if you arewaitlisted, there is no reason to fret. You will be beeped regularly —again through the friendly SMS — on the reservation status.Thenew system will be in place across the country within a few months. The IndianRailway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited, an Indian Railways’ PSU,is thrashing out the details of the project with cellularoperators.“We have also opened a dialogue with banks todevelop a mechanism that would allow online transference of the fare. Even thereservation request data could eventually be fed into be railways’ onlinereservation system, if we can get our act together with the IRCTC authoritiesand cellular operators,� said A.S. Upadhyay, group general manager ofIRCTC’s eastern zone.Discussions have already started withprimary cellular operators like Hutchison Telecom, Bharti Mobile, Reliance,Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and others.The new system would beextremely user-friendly. One has to key in the name, age, sex, date of journey,train number and the destinations and send the SMS to telephone numbers thatwill be specified by IRCTC after the technicalities are sortedout.Passengers have to supply their credit (or debit) card numbersor their personal bank account number by SMS along with the detailed deliveryaddress.“The address info is extremely vital because we willmatch the names with the bank account details. The request will be processedonly if all parameters are satisfactory,� said Upadhyay. TheRailways will levy a service charge of Rs 40 (sleeper class) or Rs 60 (upperclass) per ticket — as in the Net booking system. The service charge,however, will not be refunded if the tickets are cancelled.Ticketsbooked on SMS will be refundable only through PRS counters, an IRCTC officialsaid. The refund will not be handed in cash but credited to thepassenger’s bank account within a week. This cuts down the risk of someonefilching your ticket and cancelling it a fast buck.