Mumbai: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Wednesday launched the beta version of its redesigned ticket booking website, offering passengers a faster, cleaner and more user-friendly experience. The new portal went live at 9 pm, introducing simplified booking, reduced captchas, visible seat availability across all classes and saved passenger details for quicker repeat bookings. Users can access it through the existing IRCTC website and share feedback before the final version is rolled out.
Modernisation drive underway
The redesigned website is part of a broader effort to modernise India's online railway ticketing system. According to the Ministry of Railways, several improvements were suggested by students of Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) during an interaction with Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The existing IRCTC website, launched in 2002, currently handles an average of around 14.5 lakh ticket bookings every day.
The beta version removes unnecessary pop-ups, flashing graphics and repeated captchas to make the booking process smoother. It also displays seat availability across all travel classes on a single screen, reduces the number of booking steps and allows users to save passenger details for faster future bookings.
The Railway Ministry said the trial phase is aimed at collecting public feedback, which will be incorporated into future updates. The upgraded website will soon be integrated with the new Passenger Reservation System (PRS) engine, which is also being overhauled. Officials said the fully functional new IRCTC portal, backed by the modernised reservation engine, is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks.
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