Online ticketing facility for railway pass holders
Online ticketing facility for railway pass holders
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
RAJYA SABHA
ANSWERED ON 03.02.2017
Online ticketing facility for railway pass holders
Shri Vivek Gupta
Will the Minister of RAILWAYS be pleased to satate :-
(a) whether it is a fact that railway pass holders do not have the facility to book tickets online through any portal;
(b) the details of money spent by Government per ticket on booking at the counter and online respectively;
(c) whether Government is planning to link Aadhaar to avail railway passes henceforth, if so, the details thereof; and
(d) the details of all sections of Government employees eligible for railway passes along with the number thereof in each case ?
ANSWER
MINISTER OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI SURESH PRABHAKAR PRABHU)
(a) to (d) : A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.
STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (d) OF STARRED QUESTION NO.16 BY SHRI VIVEK GUPTA ANSWERED IN RAJYA SABHA ON 03.02.2017 REGARDING ONLINE TICKETING FACILITY FOR RAILWAY PASS HOLDERS.
(a) Yes, Sir. At present, railway pass holders do not have the facility to book tickets online through any portal.
(b) With regard to ticket issued through computerised Passenger Reservation System(PRS) counters, the cost is incurred on various inputs such as premises, equipment, their maintenance, manpower cost and other costs such as electricity, furniture, stationery, networking etc., which varies from location to location. As far as cost of issuing e-tickets is concerned, it is incurred on procurement and maintenance of hardware and software, cost of technical manpower, recurring expenditure like rent, electricity charges, internet bandwidth charges, administrative cost, etc. Recently, huge investment has been made on Next Generation e-Ticketing System (NGeT) and large scale augmentation of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure for catering to increased number of booking demands. As such, it is not feasible to quantify the overall cost incurred on issuing of tickets through PRS counter and through online mode.
(c) At present there is no such proposal.
(d) Gazetted railway officers are given six (6) sets of privilege passes in a year and the non-gazetted railway employees are given one (01) set of privilege pass upto the end of 5th year of railway service and thereafter three (3) sets in a year. Employees of non-railway departments appointed on deputation to posts on Indian Railways and officers & staff of Railway Audit Department are also provided privilege passes at par with the railway employees of equal status.
The number of employees as on 01.04.2016 in Group ‘A’ & ‘B’ was 16360 (Provisional) and in Group ‘C’ & erstwhile Group ‘D’ was 1312449 (Provisional).