New Delhi: The Indian Railways on Sunday said that it would prepare the reservation chart eight hours before the train departure time, starting from July 1. The railways also said that it will introduce a Modern Passenger Reservation System (PRS) by December this year. (Representational image)

As of now, the chart that determines whether waitlisted tickets are confirmed is prepared and released just four hours prior to the train’s departure time.

The move is expected to give passengers more clarity and time to make alternative travel arrangements in case their train tickets do not get confirmed.

“..Wherever passengers are coming from a nearby area to catch the train, this uncertainty can cause serious problems. To remove this uncertainty, the railway board has proposed preparing the reservation chart eight hours before the departure,” a statement from the railways said.

“The Railway Minister agreed with this proposal and directed the board to start implementing this in phases so that there is no disruption,” it added.

“The passengers will get the first update on waitlist status well in advance. It will benefit passengers travelling from remote locations or suburbs of major cities for catching long distance trains. It will also provide more time to make alternative arrangements in case the wait list is not confirmed,” the railways said, adding that it will reduce uncertainties for passengers with waitlist tickets.

The railways also said that it will introduce a Modern Passenger Reservation System (PRS) by December this year.

Railway minister Ashwani Vaishnaw reviewed the upgradation of the passenger reservation system, it said, adding that the project is being executed for the last few months by the Centre For Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

“The new upgraded PRS design is..scalable to handle ten times the current load. It will significantly enhance the ticket booking capacity…it will allow over 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute. This will be an increase of roughly five times from 32,000 tickets per minute in the current PRS,” it said.

“The ticket enquiry capacity will jump ten times from 4 lakh to over 40 lakh per enquiry will be possible in a minute time. The new PRS also has a multilingual and user-friendly booking and enquiry interface,” the statement added.

Passengers will be able to submit their choice of seat and see the fare calendar. It also has integrated facilities for Divyangjan, students, patients, it said.

This comes after the railways announced that only authenticated users will be allowed to book Tatkal tickets on IRCTC website and mobile app beginning July 1 and that an OTP-based authentication will be done for Tatkal bookings from the end of July.

“The authentication will be done using Aadhaar or any other verifiable Government ID available in the user’s DigiLocker account,” the statement concluded.