E-Tickets To Become More Expensive
The Indian Railway Ministry has decided to adding service charge on their E-tickets which would make them costlier. This decision was not at all appreciated by passengers.
Earlier, whenever people booked railway tickets online, service charge was always added. Service Charge was used by the Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), to fund their online ticketing system. The Ministry of Finance (MoF) advised the IRCTC to stop charging Service charge. The MoF said that this will encourage people to book tickets online. The MoF said that they would pay the operation cost. This is why in November 2016, the service charge was removed.
Since then IRCTC did not add service charge on their tickets, they suffered big losses. The MoF paid them Rs 88 crore but even this wasn’t even as the service charge was a very big revenue for the railways. On 3rd August 2019, the Railway Ministry released a letter and announced that they will now start adding service charge. This amount will be the same as before and will not increase. E-tickets for Sleeper Class will cost Rs 20 extra and Rs 40 extra for other classes.
Passengers are not at all happy with this. Passengers say that the railway must bear the service cost not passengers. This is not fair to passengers. The IRCTC said that service charge will help generate Rs 200 crore for the railways. It has become very expensive to maintain the IRCTC website. This money will in the website’s maintenance and also make sure the website is safe for all to use.
