Buy Railway tickets the Flipkart way

As comfortable as your online trading with Flipkart, You can now book a rail ticket online and get it delivered at home on the concept of payment on delivery.

Initiating this "cash on delivery" (CoD) system rail ticketing, IRCTC, the nodal agency for Indian railways commercial activities is targeting those customers who don't have credit or debit cards and also N-banking facility. In other words the low end middle class families. "Just like booking film tickets online and payments at the time of delivery ," said a senior IRCTC official involved with the project.

This scheme has been launched on pilot basis and the service will be available in more than 200 cities initially from today. Customers can book a ticket 5 days prior to commencement of journey. While Rs 40 will be charged for the delivery of each Sleeper Class ticket, Rs. 60 will be charged for an AC class ticket. Anduril Technologies through their website and their App - BookMyTrain.com - is authorised to offer CoD services.

This is another attempt to move people away from the ticket counters and decongest the booking windows, the official said. "Just to make rail passengers comfortable with one visit to railway stations for journey," he adds. IRCTC gets almost two lakh above hits every day as the Indian railways 1.08 m lakh kms of rail routes with 1.54 lakh workforce serving 13 million passengers of which 12 million are unreserved passengers and carry a freight of 492 million tonnes.