Railway Minister inaugurates three IT enabled projects viz. (i) Hand Held Terminals for TTEs (ii) Paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application and (iii) E-booking of Disposable Linen on Trains

Railway Minister inaugurates three IT enabled projects viz. (i) Hand Held Terminals for TTEs (ii) Paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application and (iii) E-booking of Disposable Linen on Trains 

Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Union Minister of Railways  during a function held at Rail Bhawan today i.e.  10.02.2016 launched three IT enabled projects through Video-Conferencing which included (i) Paperless unreserved ticketing through mobile phone in suburban section of South Central Railway (ii) Pilot Project of hand Held Terminals for TTEs on Northern Railway and (iii) E-booking of disposable linen on trains at New Delhi Railway Station and Nizamuddin Railway Station. In addition, Launch at Mumbai Central (BCT) and Chattarpati Shivaji Terminus (CSTM) was also announced on this occasion.

.  On this event, Shri Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Railways was present as Guest of Honour.  Chairman Railway Board Shri A. K. Mital, Member Traffic Mohd. Jamshed, Member Engineering Shri V. K. Gupta, Member Staff Shri Pradip, other Board Members and other Senior Officials were present.  At New Delhi Station side Shri A. K. Puthia, General Manager, Northern Railways Smt. Meenakshi Lekhi, MP, New Delhi Constituency and at Secunderabad (SCR) side Shri Ravinder Gupta, General Manager & other senior officials were present.

 Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu stated that the Indian Railways is heading towards Digital India to bring transparency in Indian Railways and thus these there IT enabled applications have been launched. He said that Hand Held Terminals for TTEs will help in updating status of passenger list of the whole train.  He stated that with the help of Hand held Terminals for TTEs, after all allotments, remaining vacant berths will be sent back to HHT Application Servers and can be viewed on PRS terminal as well as web site (indianrail.gov.in).    Occupancy chart can be viewed on HHT device to dispense with the manual preparation of food-chart/occupancy chart. 

He further stated that with the help of CRIS, Indian Railways has developed a paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application “UTSONMOBILE”. The application for paperless journey tickets was rolled out as a pilot project between Chennai Egmore & Tambaram suburban section of Southern Railway on 22.4.2015. It was subsequently extended to suburban section of Western Railway, Central Railway, New Delhi-Palwal section of Northern Railway and Kolkata suburban section of Eastern Railway.  Today we have implemented Paperless unreserved ticketing through mobile phone in suburban section of South Central Railway

Introducing the Pilot Project of Personalised Takeaway E-Bedroll, Shri Suresh Prabhu said that the kit was earlier launched at Chennai and Trivandrum Station and this facility has also been extended at New Delhi and Hazarat Nizamudding Station for passengers which can either be booked through internet or at designated counters.  He stated that Indian Railways is committed to provide best facilities to its passengers through Technology.  

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for railways stated that these three applications will not only improve passenger amenities but also bring transparency in berth allotment. He stated that Railway Ministry is working hard to improve passenger amenities and will soon bring some more passenger amenities.

Salient Features of Projects: -

Hand Held Terminals for TTEs

With the help of Hand held Terminals for TTEs, after all allotments, remaining vacant berths will be sent back to HHT Application Servers and can be viewed on PRS terminal as well as web site (indianrail.gov.in) and information of all NT passengers will be sent to coaching refund system to get speedier refund and eliminate the preparation of manual Exception Data Reports (EDR).  Occupancy chart can be viewed on HHT device to dispense with the manual preparation of food-chart/occupancy chart.

The biggest spinoffs of the Project are:-

a)   Revenue Yield Maximization, by making onboard accommodation availability visible to downstream Stations so that they can do current bookings against these vacant seats, realizing additional revenue against the same as presently these seats usually go vacant up to the terminal stations due to non-availability of this information with the prospective Passengers.

b)   The Application ensures greater transparency in the allotment of Accommodation onboard.

c)    It will ensure better productivity norms amongst TTE’s as the process of ticket checking will get simplified considerably.

Paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application

· To move forward in line with Digital India, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has developed a paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application “UTSONMOBILE”,  both for Android and Windows platforms. In this application, features enable booking of paperless unreserved journey tickets, season tickets and platform tickets through mobile phones.

· The applicationis being introduced today for issue of paperless unreserved journey ticket and season ticket for Secunderabad /Hyderabad suburban section of South Central Railway.The paperless platform tickets will be implemented on 5 stations of South Central Railway viz. Secunderabad Jn., Hyderabad Deccan, Begampet, Falaknuma and Lingampalli.   

· The application for paperless journey tickets was rolled out as a pilot project between Chennai Egmore & Tambaram suburban section of Southern Railway on 22.4.2015. It was subsequently extended to suburban section of Western Railway, Central Railway, New Delhi-Palwal section of Northern Railway and Kolkata suburban section of Eastern Railway. With today's expansion, the mobile paperless ticket application will now be available at 345 stations covering a distance of 955 Kms.

· The application provides necessary on-screen alerts to guide the passenger during the booking process. Payment for the ticket is done through the "Railway Wallet” feature in the "App". After booking the ticket, the passenger will get the ticket confirmation screen which contains limited information of the ticket. The paperless tickets will be stored in the local mobile application database in the encrypted form which cannot be tampered with. Ticket booked in paperless mode cannot be cancelled in order to prevent claiming of refund after travel.

· The journey ticket has distinct colour scheme on daily basis and it is embedded 

with Quick Response (QR) code. Similarly, paperless season ticket has distinct colour scheme for monthly season ticket, quarterly season ticket, half yearly season ticket and yearly season ticket. The paperless ticket cannot be forwarded to another mobile or edited or printed. The old invalid tickets will be removed from the mobile device through a sync feature in the ‘App’.

·For the purpose of ticket checking, the application has various features such as colour scheme, show ticket features, secret code of the day, booking time of the ticket and scrolling of legend “IR UNRESERVED TICKETING”. In case of mobile in disconnected mode, it will be checked through QR Code.

·User can download ‘App’ from Google Play Store or Window Store.

 E-booking of Disposable Linen on Trains

The Railway Ministry has given the go-ahead to the pilot project of E-Bedroll that allows passengers to avail bedroll kits through online booking and from over the counter at select outlets set up by the IRCTC on the stations.

Hon’ble Railway Minister Shri Suresh Prabhu has inaugurated the facility on February 7, 2016 at Chennai Central Station. The facility has also been inaugurated at Trivandrum Station on the same day by its DRM.  Further Shri Suresh Prabhu will inaugurate the facility remotely from his office in Railway Board on February 10, 2016.

Passengers can avail this facility by paying Rs 140 for two bed sheets and a pillow, Rs 110 for a blanket. These can be purchased together at a cost of Rs 250 or can be purchased separately.  

The facility can be availed by passengers having confirmed e-tickets at the time of ticketing or up to four hours prior to the scheduled departure of the train on the basis of online payment.  Online booking of bedroll kit will also be offered to confirmed passengers other than e-ticket holders up to four hours prior to the scheduled departure of the train. The booked bedroll will be supplied at the berth of the passenger by IRCTC. 

The facility has also been made available at select IRCTC outlets at the stations from where it can be purchased over the counter, by the passengers. Earlier Personalised take away bedrolls service in was launched on 07.02.2016 in Chennai Central Railway Station and Thiruvananthapuram Central Railway Station of Southern Railway