IRCTC busts train online reservation mafia
Amaravati: After making train reservations online, the need to go to railway booking counters and stand in queues to make reservations has almost reduced. Taking advantage of this, the reservation ticket mafia, using software called bots, is making crores by booking tickets within minutes of the release of Tatkal bookings and selling them in bulk in the outside market. If we go into details….
Behind the booking problem:- IRCTC has busted the mafia behind the ticket booking problem faced by lakhs of railway passengers every day during reservation. It was announced that there was a huge scam behind the tickets selling out in minutes.
Tickets Not Available message:- After receiving around 134 complaints regarding the issue faced during ticket booking, an investigation conducted by IRCTC into the matter revealed a huge scam that the authorities were trying to cover up.In the last five months, 2.9 lakh PNRs were generated five minutes before the ticket booking window opened. This is completely against the rules. Ticket mafia people used to book tickets in seconds using automated tools (software) called bots. This meant that tickets would be sold out before ordinary passengers could log in. If you log in to IRCTC and try to book tickets when the reservation slot opens, you will immediately get a message saying “Waiting List” or “Tickets Not Available”.
This means that automated tools called bots already book tickets. This has created a situation where passengers are afraid to book tickets for special trains and tatkal tickets. Officials said the main goal of this scam is to have tickets disappear within minutes of booking opening. The gang used bots to run programming scripts on the IRCTC website, log in first, and book tickets. It was also revealed that they used to create user accounts with fake credentials and hack the reservation and logging process in advance. These tickets were later sold in blocks to passengers through intermediaries for large sums. This left millions of middle-class people unable to travel.
Authorities have blocked 6,800 disposal email domains set up by the mafia to use bot software. Also, 2.5 crore IRCTC user IDs have been deactivated.
Later, during a special drive, 2 million Origin user IDs were reactivated.
With this, IRCTC has introduced a new technology called Anti Bot Application. This app instantly detects and stops automated bookings made by bots. Thus, the authorities are taking steps to ensure that ordinary passengers receive tickets in a more transparent and timely manner.
