Booking e-ticket on IRCTC may cost more for Rail passengers, Service Charges likely to be back

New Delhi: In what could spell some bad news for the Railway passengers, booking e-ticket on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) may cost more as the for Railways ticketing arm is mulling to bring back service charges levied on e-tickets.

Sources told Zee Media that the Finance Ministry has written a letter to the Railways department asking it to use its discretion on levying service charge on booking online tickets.

This was reportedly necessiated after the Finance Ministry expressed its inability to provide Rs 88 crore that the ticketing arm had to bear after withdrawal of service charges on booking e-tickets. Notably IRCTC had to incur huge losses post demonetization when it decided to promote digital India by withdrawing service charges on online tickets.

The Finance Ministry had assured Railways that it will compensate for the losses that the ticketing arm had to bear owing to the decision, sources further said.

Sources said that IRCTC may again impose a service charge of Rs 20 on booking online tickets for sleeper class and Rs 40 for booking tickets for Air Conditioned class.

The IRCTC board meeting will soon be held where the decision on bringing back service charge may be taken, sources added.

In order to incentivise cashless transactions through online booking, IRCTC had withdrawn service charge on booking online tickets during several intervals, and extending the deadline multiple times. This to a point that from November 2016 uptill now, no service charge on booking e-tickets are being levied.