Yes, you read right! All the monthly tickets and the platforms tickets are soon going to be paperless since the Indian Railways is planning on launching a mobile app for the service. Cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi will be able to take the perks of this service in the upcoming few days. The Railway Minister has confirmed the launch of this facility in the above mentioned cities in the upcoming few days.
He also has launched two distinguished IT based services at New Delhi Station, which are cash and smart machines and a special mobile application for monitoring any freight operation. The app is called Parichaalan. He stated that about 70 lakh passengers utilise the monthly tickets in the city Mumbai along out of the 2 crore passengers daily. He added that a high number of people use monthly tickets at many stations in cities like Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai.
This initiative is a part of government’s Digital India plan, which will not only save paper but reduce the crowd and load at booking counters. This mobile app will help people in saving a lot of time while travelling. And since most people own smart phones today, it is going to make a lot of passengers happy.
The unreserved paperless ticket system in the Delhi-Palwalunit covers around 11 stations. This app is available currently for Android and Windows phone users. Sadly, people using iPhones might not be able to take the perks of this facility, but we hope that IOs too has this important mobile application. The app will not only give you the benefits of booking train tickets online but also provide important alerts for guiding every passenger during any booking process. There is a railway wallet through which you can make your payments. Once you book the ticket, you will receive a confirmation on the screen, which has all the information about your train ticket.
Before this, the mobile app was launched on trial basis in the month of April in the Egmore and Tambram sections of Chennai. Then the app was imitated in the Western Railways at stations, Churchgate and Dahanu.
The app is developed by CRIS (The Centre for Railway Information Systems) and is called UTSONMOBILE. Paperless unreserved ticket feature in this application focuses towards eliminating the need to waste paper and print tickets.