Here’s good news for crores of railway passengers. The capacity of the IRCTC website is going to increase by 1000 per cent. Now, as many as 2.25 lakh tickets can be booked on the website instead of 25,000 per minute.

Booking of tickets from Tatkal quota or advance reservation can now be done instantaneously. Rail passengers will no longer have to face the problem of slow speed of the websites. What’s more, the capacity of the website will increase from four lakh to 40 lakh per minute. It is claimed that the new avatar of the IRCT will start functioning by September 2023.

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The renewed website will tell passengers whether the waitlisted ticket is confirmed or not (in percentage). This possibility will be speculated on the basis of the data from the last two years. In case of a long waiting list, passengers will be informed about other trains as an alternative.

On entering the location and date on the first page of the website, a list of all the trains will appear and information about the availability of berths will be displayed in it. They won’t need a login.

During ticket booking, the passenger will be able to create his own separate card. Clicking on it will start the ticket booking process. The passenger will be relieved of filling in his name, address, age, mobile number, etc.

At present, 15 lakh tickets are booked online on the Railways while 25,000 queries are made per minute. With the increase in capacity to 2.25 lakh per minute, passengers will get instant answers.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav told reporters that the capacity of the server, hardware, software, and internet of the website would be increased. The new avatar of IRCTC will start functioning by September 2023. With this, there will be curbs on booking tickets by touts by breaking into the website. It may be noted that at present 15 lakh people book tickets every day.

Expressing happiness over the budgetary allocation of Rs 2.41 lakh crore for Railways in the General Budget, the railway minister said on the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, plans have been made to open grocery shops at 2,000 railway stations.

At these shops, which will be open for 24 hours, railway passengers can buy their daily essentials. Alongside the grocery shops, drug centers will be opened where one will be able to take the necessary medicines.

Ashwini said that this would generate employment opportunities on a large scale. The shops are running at 550 stations. Each of the shops is earning from Rs 25,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh per month. From 2023, the scheme will be expanded to the first 750 and then 2000 stations in a phased manner.

There is good news for the villages, settlements, and towns situated near railway lines. To enable them to cross the line, 1,000 flyover-underpasses will be built across the country in 2023. The newly designed flyover-underpass is built in a scientific way to be more convenient and the underpass will not get waterlogged. Work on one thousand is on in the current financial year. Since 2014, 10,438 flyover-underpasses have been built.

The railway minister said in 2023, the Railways will add 12 kilometers of new rail lines, gauge conversion, doubling of rail lines, and trifurcation every day. In this way, Railways will lay a total of 7000-kilometer lines. Rail line capacity has increased by 300 percent in the last eight years.

He informed that 2,075 stations will be developed in 2023 under the Railway Station Redevelopment Scheme. Station development will be done keeping in mind the regional historical places and monuments.