Great news for Non Resident Indians and foreign tourist who often visit India as Indian railways is soon extending online booking facility for them.
At present Indian railway offer online booking but for that you need to have a Indian credit/debit card in addition to Indian mobile phone number where the ticket info is send after online booking.
So often foreign tourist and even NRIs have to depend upon the Indian tour operator to book the ticket.
But soon that is going to change as IRCTC is strengthening its ticketing site to meet the demand.
According to IRCTC chairman and managing director A K Manocha – “We are incorporating certain checks …in our website to provide booking facility for foreigners.
Earlier, the facility was existing but it was withdrawn after cases of misuse of credit cards…now the issues have been addressed …”.
Probably recent step by IRCTC could be because of the fact that the booking for the luxury Palace on Wheel, Maharaja and other tourist specials trains have dropped considerably.
In the year 2014-15, more than 183 million tickets were booked on IRCTC ticketing site and around 150 million tickets booked till December 2015. Around 58 per cent of total Indian railway tickets sold are booked online.
IRCTC site is equipped to take the load of 15,000 tickets in a minute.