Link Aadhaar with IRCTC to double the tickets you can book in a month

New Delhi: Indian Railways has increased the monthly cap on tickets booked on the ICRTC portal from six to 12 for Aadhaar-verified passengers.

The move, which came into effect on October 26, is believed to be an innovative way for the railways to encourage passengers to link their Aadhar numbers to their online booking accounts on IRCTC.

However, passengers can continue to book up to six tickets a month without validating their Aadhaar cards.

If the number goes beyond six, the Aadhaar number of the user and one of the passengers should be updated in the IRCTC portal.

Steps to avail the facility of booking more than 6 tickets and up to 12 tickets in a month:

-IRCTC registered user is required to get himself Aadhaar verified using Aadhaar KYC option in "my profile'.

-User’s Aadhaar will be verified by sending an OTP on his mobile number linked with his Aadhaar number. On successful submission of OTP, user will become Aadhaar verified.

-At least One (1) passenger on the ticket being booked, beyond 6 tickets in a month, should also be Aadhaar verified.

-Users are required to verify the probable passengers through their respective Aadhaar number and store the verified  passengers in  passenger master list.  This should be done before starting the ticket booking process, beyond 6 tickets in a month.

-User can add Aadhaar verified  passenger from master list at  the time of booking to book additional tickets upto 12 tickets in a month.

The move is expected to eliminate malpractices in ticket bookings as touts and travel agents cannot create fake user IDs anymore. In the IRCTC portal, six passengers can be reserved on a single ticket under general quota while Tatkal bookings allow four passengers per ticket.

The railways had announced in December last year that registration of Aadhaar with IRCTC was mandatory to avail concessions from April 1, 2017, but dropped the idea after opposition from various forums.