To get a confirmed ticket on Indian Railways that ferries lakhs of passengers on a daily basis is in itself a great deal. And to make the task cut out for its customers, the behemoth has been planning serious measures including biometric linking to public reservation charts to real-time vacant berth status updates.

These are the steps taken to make the Railways ticket booking and refund process easier for its passengers:

1. Now the reservation charts are available for public to view: After the chart is prepared for the concerned travel journey, passengers in view of the vacant birth can make easier booking. Herein it is to be noted that the initial or the first chart goes public 4 hours before the departure of the train whereas the second one is made available 30 minutes before the train starts from the source station.

And with it due to the availability of the chart, now the TTE will not be able to deny you the seat in case there remains any vacant seat.

2. Biometric linking for unreserved coaches: In case of Western Railways, the behemoth has on a trial basis started the ticket booking service through biometric linking. This has been done due to massive complaints concerning seat cornering by anti-social elements. In it the person buying ticket of the unreserved coach will have to get his fingerprints scanned and after it a token is generated which has to be shown to the RPF personnel when boarding the train.

3. CNF probability: In a case when there are no confirmed seats for a particular train journey, then the IRCTC portal indicates the probability of getting the confirmed ticket. If it is low then you can go for the Vikalp option that might offer you confirmed seat in other train on the same date of your preference for the travel.

4. Linking of PNRs: Now there is another option to link 2 PNRs of connecting trains which can be from IRCTC portal or from the ticket reservation counter. It is to be further noted that in a case when the passenger misses the train journey due to be taken on in a connecting train because of the delay of the first train then the fare for the portion travelled is retained and the refund is provided on the balance amount. The refund granted in this case is the fare of the untravelled portion.

5. For premium trains there is made a live updation of availability of trains: In case of Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express, TTEs have been asked to update status of availability of train berths on real time basis in a running train.

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