Team News Riveting
New Delhi, March 24
The suspension of train services following COVID-19 induced lockdown severely affected the revenue of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) managed e-ticketing website.
IRCTC is a fully owned subsidiary of the Indian Railways that provides ticketing, catering, and tourism services to the national transporter. The lockdown affected its e-ticketing revenue by over 56 per cent. IRCTC e-ticketing website provides the facility of online booking of reserved tickets on Indian Railways.
Revenue generated during the last two years through IRCTC website with regard to passengers booking is as under:
| Year | Amount collected as ticket fare ( in Crores) |
| 2018-19 | 32,070 |
| 2019-20 | 34,055 |
| 2020-21 Till Feb, 2021 | 14,915 |
Minister of Railways, Commerce and Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal informed in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today that Railway uses IT infrastructure for the vital areas of customer interface. Unreserved tickets are booked on the Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) application.
E-payment facility is provided to freight customers for collection of freight charges and Wagon Registration Fee. Collection of freight charges through e-payment has gone up from 76.16 per cent last year (2019-20) to 83.77 per cent in the current financial year (2020-21).
