Paper warrants for CAPF personnel rail travel likely to be

The Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel may not have to visit reservation counter to book a train ticket as the government may soon replace the age-old paper-based warrant system with an online facility.
A senior paramilitary force official said the Railway Board has recently send its approval in this regard and the Union Home Ministry is developing the required "web services module" so that e-tickets could be issued and paper-based rail warrants or travel authorisation could be done away with.
A proposal in this regard was moved by CAPFs--CRPF, BSF, ITBP, CISF and SSB--to the railways sometime back, so that lakhs of their troops working in the difficult internal security duty grid could get hassle-free tickets to travel for duty or for their leave.

The CAPF personnel at present get paper-based authorisation slips called warrants to undertake rail travel.
"Getting a railway ticket booked on paper warrants is a time-consuming affair, as a personnel has to get it done physically through the ticket booking window which takes a lot of time. In this age of e-communication, booking an e-ticket will be a good step towards the welfare of these personnel deployed for some of the toughest duties across the country," he said.
The official said the Board has informed them that they intend to discontinue the use of warrant system for rail travel from the next financial year beginning April 1, and hence a new web-based system is being prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs to generate e-tickets based on bonafide authority documents produced by a jawan or an officer.

A provision in this regard is likely to be made in the Rail Budget to be presented by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on February 25.
He said once the software in this regard is launched, the personnel of these forces will not have to go to a booking window for booking a railway ticket but can get it done over the internet.