IRCTC seems to hitting rough weather with Indian Railways – First their Menu went off the table, and now it is the e-ticketing business which seems to be at stake.
Remember the sound of empty scissors that barbers create during the impending cut? – It signifies that he is ready to cut your long-grown hairs the very next moment and just seem to be ensuring whether those pair of scissors is operating well enough…
Similarly, after hearing the sound bytes of snatching the catering business from its subsidiary IRCTC, Indian Railways seems to be in no mood to allow the monopoly of IRCTC in the domain of e-ticket booking to the rail passengers as well.
The Indian Railways is now mulling to directly undertake the sale of e-tickets on its own portal , in a yet another setback to the IRCTC. The reason is mismanagement of e-ticketing by IRCTC in form of siphoning off tickets in fictitious names, leading to unavailability of seats to legitimate customers.
More recently, the IRCTC website was also in the news on account of inability of the passengers to book tatkal tickets during the peak morning hours of around 8 AM to 9 AM. Subsequently, after much hue-n-cry, the travel agents were barred from using the reservation site during the first hour to reduce the traffic on the site.
It was alleged that the travel agents cornered most of the tatkal tickets in the initial hour and created an artificial shortage of tickets, thus creating a plot for demanding premiums from the retail passengers for the sale of tatkal berths from them at a cost.
It is estimated that the IRCTC’s business could take a substantial hit on account of loss of opportunities in both catering and e-ticketing business to the railway passengers. During the last financial year, IRCTC earned Rs.122 crore from the sale of e-tickets alone.
In my opinion, there is something fishy going out over there. IRCTC is a subsidiary of Indian Railways. So, why is Indian Railways creating a plot that is not in the best interest of IRCTC? It is like snatching food from right hand and handing it over to left hand. At the end of the day, the food is going to be consumed by none other than your own body.
So, what could be the game in this? Is it anything related to bribe, corruption or personal Politics?
railway book only for VVVIP and agent.
not for normal people.
Indian Railway is providing another way of accessing there services to existing mode. Exhibiting the role model to other industry player. Great savings by deploying emerging technologies.
friends yeh 8.00 se 9.00 tak irctc agents ko booking na karne dene ke peechey public ko sahoolat dena maksad nahin hay balki public ko lootne ke liye laal fitashahi ne yeh kadam uthaya hai rpf se lekar booking office key employees ki upar ki kamai kam ho gai thi .blog likh kar sirf kuch nahin ho sakta sabhi agenton ko ek jut ho kar deligation ke roop mein sambandhit mantralay se milna ho ga sunvai na hone ki soorat mein technical muddon ko ektarit kar ke court mein jana padega aur mujhe vishwas hay ki agar court mein sahi mudda rakha jayega to jeet hum agenton ki ho gi lekin pahele hum log ek hokar sangathan to banaen .
bharsht shashan bharsht neta bharsht sarkar ke virodh mein agento ek joot ho kar maidan mein utar jao tum paisa le kar frenchise dene wali companiyon ne apna hissa ley liya unko tumhari chinta nahin hay tumhen apni chinta khood karni ho gi
The grievances expressed here is just a tip of iceberg. Take for instance, the food being served at Comesum restaurant in Vijayawada railway station. I dont know why they want to loot people so much and get themselves bloated bellies! The plate meal( South Indian ) costs Rs.65. a couple of puries and a cup of rice and a few curries. We are not even talking of the quantity here. There is hardly any quality and taste in that food. Furthermore, there is no other restaurant on the platform to exercise one’s choice. Whether you like or not, you have to settle for this looter restaurant. How many places do you find that set their price as high as rs.65? For a decent meal, restaurants charge around rs.45 for an unlimited meal. Here you have an unending stream of customers pouring in and paying a hefty rs.65! Do passengers have to pay this much and settle for such lousy meal? Is IRCTC sleeping or rather hand in glove with these crooks? It’s common sense that says when you have higher volumes of sales, you can even efford to reduce the profit margin by leveraging the volume sales. But here everything defies the logic. The food is also worst. Just because the passengers cant go out and spend their own time outside of the railway station and have good food, does IRCTC have to rob them? Isnt it criminal on their part? Everyday thousands of passengers eat there and are divested of their hard-earned money. This is utter apathetic government which doesnt enforce any standards on how these outlets operate. Imagine homw much money they are minting on mass scale? Customers are literally forced to part with their money. It’s high time cosumer courts take suo mottu such cases from various sources of media including internet , and contain these anti-people businesses.
Regards
Jyothi
If you ever use ClearTrip site to book tickets, you will never miss IRCTC again…
ClearTrip shows that it is possible to make the entire ticketing process simple, and efficient.
Good riddance IRCTC!
Can somebody tell me about the result for irctc 2010 exam happened in delhi…. is it cancelled or what……………IR really sucks who are coming in d way of irctc….so many people will loose the job due to the lost catering business of irctc…..i hope other vacancies stand intact like finance and tourism….
do any one nows what happen to irctc2010 exam result after catering policy 2010???is it cancelled??
what a profetionalism really railways dont deserve to have quality profesenal .
First things first…Didnt know of this development before reading your blog..As you said, its seriously something fishy as to why the Indian railways is bent on destroying IRCTC and also for the fact that e – ticketing has developed a hell lot over the last couple of years..
@Aseem… yes, definitely something unknown within. Also, it is high time one of the two – IR or IRCTC – will come out in the public with clarifications on the same.
IRCTC and Railways were at logger heads and often had organizational confusion as to who the real boss was. With so much money at stake, it seems the fellas at Railways felt left behind. There was quite bit of monopoly developing in IRCTC, madam wasn’t too happy and several at Railway board feel they did not have the reins to control IRCTC. So, clipping was practical. Lack of customer satisfaction, mounting complaints on food and catering consortia looting to the bank pissed people off no ends. Catering was a monopoly of several Rajdhani trains and grew to a 400Cr empire in certain cases, folks like them had fake consortia and they had to be cut.
@Raj… How well I agree with most of the points mentioned by you above. There is definitely two conflicting ideas somewhere at the higher management levels, which is leading to all this partitions within.
Yes….something is definately fishy. I guess it’s a political lobby of black marketers who lost a cash cow of selling tickets in black, is playing a role here.
Assuming that they wont be using the same IRCTC systems, what’s more worrying is – these idiots are murdering a wonderful e ticketing platform.
@Sunil… IRCTC e-ticketing site will continue to remain, just that it might lose monopoly. But, it would be interesting to see how many passengers stay-put with IRCTC’s e-ticketing platform.