Railways' scheme for buying unreserved tickets online to go live from Nov 1

Waiting in long queues to buy tickets at railway stations will now be a thing of the past as the railways' UTS mobile app for buying unreserved tickets online will be available nationwide from November 1, a senior official said Tuesday.

While the scheme was started four years ago, it failed to catch on among passengers except in Mumbai, where it was first launched because a large number of people travel in locals.

After Mumbai, it was started in Delhi-Palwal and Chennai city.

As of now railway has already implemented the scheme in 15 of its zones with the Northereast Frontier Railway and West Central Railway being the remaining two zones.

The scheme is also open for those who want to buy tickets for travelling long distance.

"We have been trying to engage people to encourage them to use the UTS mobile application more and more. The numbers are growing and we are hopeful that once passengers understand the benefits of this app, they will buy their tickets online.

"With certain zones not being a part of the app, a lot of passengers were unable to use it. Any station intersecting these zones was left out of the app. From November 1, it will be available across India," a senior railways official said.

In the last four years, there were around 45 lakh registered users of this app with around 87,000 tickets being bought per day on it on average, he said.

A passengers needs to be around 25-30 metres away from the station to avail the application and is allowed to book only four tickets at a time through it.

On the app, a registered user can not only buy tickets, but also platform tickets and monthly passes.

The railways earns around Rs 45 lakh per day through the online sale of such unreserved tickets, the official said.