E-ticketing services for citizens: This is how long IRCTC will take to rollout 2.82 lakh service centres

Given the pace at which retail service providers (RSP) are registering daily with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), it is likely to take take it three more years to provide e-ticketing services to citizens through 2.82 lakh retail service providers. As of now, only 38,500 RSPs have registered with the IRCTC. According to a report, achieving 2.82 lakh service providers target was difficult to achieve with around 200-300 retail service providers (RSP) registering daily with the railway e-ticketing service provider. 

"With just 200-300 registering daily, we have 38,500 RSPs for the IRCTC services. We are taking this on a war footing," PTI reported quoting a source.  The government has launched common service centres (CSC) in rural areas to enable more merchants to accept digital payment. The CSCs, recently renamed as 'Digital Seva Kendras', help citizens in rural areas with the delivery of various electronic services like online ticket booking, Aadhaar enrolment, printing and generation of certifications, among others. According to the government, there are 2.92 lakh such centres operational in the country.

Recently, it launched IRCTC Connect app to make payment for its services easier. Now, the users of the app will be able to make payments through e-wallets for all train bookings with it. Earlier, user could only pay with their credit or debit cards, netbanking or UPI.  These modes of payments take more time as these involve putting in card details and waiting for OTP sent by the bank for verification for every transaction. It also saves the payment gateway charges.

Meanwhile, IRCTC has also developed an artificial intelligence (AI) module to monitor its base kitchens across India. The AI module can detect an unexpected change or an event that does not conform to the pattern using their machine learning algorithms. To begin with, CCTV camaras have been installed in 16 kitchen bases. The system detects head gear, uniforms, presence of rodents in the kitchen, and mopping across kitchens and raises issues with IRCTC.