Rlys to spend Rs 5,000 cr on IT activities

The railway ministry is planning to allocate Rs 5,000 crore for its information technology-related operations in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan.

This will be a four fold increase in the allocation by the ministry for infotech-related activities.

A railway ministry official told Business Standard that the major part of this would go into expanding ticketing facilities, with the aim of taking it to the passenger's doorstep.

With the railway ministry already having expanded its e-ticketing facility to passengers through cyber cafes, automated teller machines and even filling stations the Rs 5,000 crore fund will be used for further consolidation of these facilities. The focus will be more on saving expenses on back-end operations.

In short, holistic planning for computerisation would be done, a railway ministry official said.

The ministry is already in talks with the department of posts for making railway tickets available in post offices and authorising the postman to deliver tickets at the passenger's doorstep.

Also, through its ticket and catering service provider arm, the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation, the railway ministry is talking to Indian Oil Corporation and other oil public sector utilities for providing e-ticketing facilities at filling staions.

IRCTC recently tied up with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd for using its petrol pumps for e-ticketing facilities.

Most significantly, the railway ministry in the process of expanding the unreserved ticketing system to all the small stations of the country. This system was introduced in 2001, wherein daily passengers for short distance journeys were given the option to buy tickets 72 hours in advance.

Ministry officials now said this facility would be extended even to stations in mofussil towns so that passengers there do not have to travel to the nearest major station to buy tickets for short distance travel.

Also, in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, the railway ministry intends to extend the passenger reservation system to these small stations so that passengers can book tickets for long journeys from their own stations.

Apart from this the ministry will also consolidate its freight management facilities by enhancing its e-payment of freight. The ministry has an e-banking facility for payment of freight for coal movement to Badarpur Thermal Power Station from collieries in east-central railways. This facility would be expanded to other zones, ministry sources said.

The ministry recently introduced the continuous consignment tracking system in which customers are able to track their consignment continuously from the stage of loading and operational release, to delivery.

This operation falls under the freight operating information system, which the ministry plans to strengthen further by making continuous consignment tracking system available all over the rail network.