Owing to a latest reform, around 50 percent refunds for canceled railway e-tickets are now being processed within six hours of cancellation.
Railways Reforms – Canceled Ticket Refunds Quickly
So far, we all know that the refunds of money following the cancellation of tickets online had been a perennial pain for all the train travelers.
But, after this move, Railway data indicates money is refunded within one day in case of e-tickets and filing of ticket-deposit receipts (TDRs) online in almost 98 per cent of the cases.
The move has definitely provided some relief to passengers during the peak summer season of travel.
On an average there are 5,000 refund cases every day usually.
Changes In the Earlier Process
It appears that the ministry of railways has pushed changes in the archaic, time-consuming ways of processing refunds by systematically targeting every bottleneck in the loop over the past few months.
Prior to this, every refund request was being vetted by the Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE) of the train.
Their main concern was to verify that the person seeking the refund indeed did not undertake the journey.
So, these requests were sent to the zonal railways where the TTE’s charts were checked.
This process was cumbersome and took days, if not more.
But this has changed now as TTEs carry handheld terminals, which are linked to the information system in the backend, and such data is synced in no time.
It appears that the ministry has been pushing zones to purchase those terminals.
So that they can put them to use everywhere and do away with the old method of TTEs carrying their paper charts.
Besides this, they have been decreed that not a single case of refund should go to zones in the cases where data from handheld terminals are available.
This has definitely helped as in almost all the cases of refund requests that are vetted through data from handheld terminals, the money is being credited within a day now, according to the officials.
In addition to this, the ministry also initiated some systemic changes within the information technology infrastructure in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) as well as the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).
These changes provide the backbone for the ticketing system notably.
As a result, the refund processes now triggered immediately and automatically, resulting in speedier crediting of the money to the customers’ source account.
