Need Confirmed Lower Berth? Only These Passengers Eligible! How Indian Railways Provide Confirmed Lower Berth?

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation is one fascinating organization. It boasts a lot of quirky things. IRCTC’s next-generation e-ticketing system can book 7200 tickets per minute. Its website is currently one of the most transacted websites in the Asia-Pacific region with a transaction volume of more than 25 million per month and 7.2 million logins per day. Also according to official data, over 1.5 lakh people can use the website at the same time.

But as no system is perfect, IRCTC must also be having some flaws. Or at least this is what a consumer of IRCTC thought when his plan of booking tickets did not go down as he had planned.

Are you looking for lower berths for senior citizens, ICTC explains how.

It is well known that senior citizens are given priority of lower berth while traveling in trains. But many times, despite requesting for senior citizens during ticket booking, they get a middle berth or upper berth instead of the lower berth. This makes it difficult for them to travel.

A few days ago on Twitter, a passenger tagged Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav, the passenger has written he had booked tickets for three senior citizens with lower berth preference, while there were 102 berths were available, despite that they were given middle berth, Upper berth, and side lower berth. He asked to make the amendments.

To his tweet, IRCTC has given a clarification. IRCTC replied that- Sir, Lower berths/Senior Citizen quota berths are only 60 years and above, lower berths earmarked for female age of 45 years and above, when she is single or two passengers (traveling on one ticket). under the norms). IRCTC further added, if there are more than two senior citizens or one is a senior citizen and the other is not a senior citizen, the system will not consider it.

Ticket regulation for non-essential travel continues

Last year the Indian Railways had suspended concessional tickets for many categories of people, including senior citizens, to discourage non-essential travel in view of the pandemic. The Railways has also withdrawn the concessions for senior citizens as the risk of spread and mortality due to the COVID-19 virus is highest in that category.

In order to keep things in control, it has been decided as a special case to have no concessional Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) and passenger reservation for all classes.