Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav has announced that the new website of IRCTC will be launched by July 15. The minister’s sudden announcement came after a student complained about the difficulty he was facing in booking tickets.
New Delhi: Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav has announced that a new and improved website of IRCTC will be launched by July 15. He made this big announcement while interacting with students at Malviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur. A video of this incident has gone viral on social media, in which the minister is seen immediately calling a railway official and instructing him to prepare a new website on the complaint of a student.
A student’s complaint and minister’s action
All this happened when a student complained about the problems he faced while booking train tickets. The student said, “Sir, please get the captcha problem fixed in IRCTC.” On hearing this, the minister immediately called a senior official of the department. He asked the officer if a new website could be prepared within 30 days, as students were demanding it. After this the minister promised that the new site would come by July 15, which was welcomed by the students with applause.
Long standing technical problems
Hanging of IRCTC website or technical glitch is not a new thing. Especially when more people book tickets simultaneously, like at the time of Tatkal ticket booking, this problem becomes common. Passengers also remain troubled by the delay in receiving OTP during Tatkal booking. It is expected that the launch of the new website will provide relief from all these problems to a great extent.
Indian Railways started online ticket booking in 2002, after which there have been major changes in this sector. Today, 88 percent of the total train ticket booking in the country is done online instead of at railway counters. From July last year, official identity card verification was made mandatory for booking Tatkal tickets. Apart from this, to prevent fraud in ticket booking, last year itself 3.04 crore fake or suspicious accounts were canceled and 2.94 crore accounts were also temporarily suspended.
Artificial Intelligence to monitor food quality
Apart from ticket booking, IRCTC is also taking major steps to ensure the quality and cleanliness of food served at railway stations and trains. For this, a monitoring system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be implemented in the base kitchen. This technology will help in maintaining accurate 24-hour monitoring of railway canteens across the country. For this, 2,394 AI-based cameras have been installed connecting more than 800 IRCTC kitchens in the country. Live monitoring of these cameras is done from the Central War Room of Delhi. This AI system can detect nine types of deficiencies that can cause lack of hygiene in the food served in trains. Indian Railways says that the purpose of these new digital improvements is to provide better service to passengers.
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