Revamping the railway reservation system, as proposed in the Budget, by introducing next generation e-ticketing is a welcome move, Kiran Karnik, Former President of Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies), said.

Karnik was the President from 2001 to 2007.

The new reservation system proposes to improve e-ticketing support to 7,200 tickets per minute against the existing 2,000 tickets per minute and accommodate 120,000 users at any point of time.

According to Karnik, the decision comes as the acknowledgment of increasing demand for online ticketing; and is one of the important moves in e-ticketing.

“One of the most important uses of IT was when e-ticketing was introduced thereby doing away with the uncertainties of train travel. Now this decision to revamp the reservation system is another of the pioneering steps especially when demand for online booking are on the rise,” he told Business Line .

The proposal should also bring cheer for the IT industry, whose expertise would be required.

Investments

The former Nasscom head was, however, unsure of the investments that will go in to make the proposal a reality.

According to him, there were two methods.

One is incremental or smaller upgrades to an existing system; and the second one was installing a brand new system that would entail larger investments.

“It is to be seen what method the Ministry opts for. As of now it is difficult to gauge the investments that are required,” Karnik added.

Larger IT involvement

According to Karnik, the budget has also paved way for larger involvement of IT in the Railways.

Proposals such as having work-stations on a pay-per-use model or Wi-Fi connectivity are some of the positives and welcome moves.

“These may not be pioneering decisions, but they definitely acknowledge the growing need of business class and other passengers and the imminent change in passenger requirements,” he added.

Other decisions like use of IT in passenger safety are indicative of the change in the Railways.

​“…upgrading IT infrastructure including next generation e-reservation system are the steps in the right direction and addresses the long felt need of modernising the Indian Railways and making it customer friendly,” Arvind Mahajan, Partner and Head of Infrastructure and Government Services, KPMG in India, said.​

"The intent to embrace IT in a big way towards improving enterprise resource planning in railways and to bring in higher levels of operational and cost efficiency is a very big positive from this Budget," Hemant Kanoria, CMD, Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd said.

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