Indian Railways Hikes Fare But Leaves Passengers In Lurch; Tatkal Ticket Scam Exposes IRCTC Hype, Ticketing Mafia Syndicate

IRCTC Tatkal Ticket Booking: Fraudsters are increasingly using automated bots and software to create fake user accounts, allowing them to book Tatkal train tickets within seconds.

Indian Railways Fare Hike But Fails To Curb Tatkal Ticket Scam: Indian Railways recently announced a hike in fares. Under the new ticket pricing structure, passengers will pay an extra 1 paisa per km on journeys beyond 215 km in Ordinary Class, and 2 paise per km for Mail and Express non-AC and AC classes. Passengers on a 500 km non-AC journey will pay an additional Rs 10 for their journey. There is no increase in ticket prices for passengers travelling on routes shorter than 215 km.

This comes weeks after Railways claimed to have improved the IRCTC Tatkal Ticket and reserved ticket booking mechanism by introducing Aadhaar-based authentication. Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently claimed that the IR deactivated a whopping 3.02 crore suspicious user IDs since January 2025. He also said that the new user IDs being added daily on the IRCTC website have declined to about 5,000 from nearly one lakh per day.

Fraudsters are increasingly using automated bots and software to create fake user accounts, allowing them to book Tatkal train tickets within seconds. These tickets are then resold at inflated prices, making it difficult for genuine passengers to secure a Tatkal ticket and travel on their planned date.

However, it appears that Railways and the IRCTC have failed in tackling the Tatkal Ticket mafia as the Tatkal quota tickets continue to vanish within seconds of slot opening, while genuine users continue to struggle to login and book the tickets for emergency needs. 

Recently, some X users shared how unauthorised booking agents operating from Telegram booked Tatkal tickets in initial seconds using automated bots and apps, while the Indian Railways and IRCTC failed to curb the menace. The agents even went on to threaten the users, saying they could do whatever they wanted, but nothing could happen to them. The automated apps have allegedly been named ‘Gadar’, ‘SpaceX’, ‘Tesla’ and ‘Avenger’ and book tickets within seconds.

When the users posted it on social media, the ticketing mafia went on to threaten them. The IRCTC or Indian Railways is yet to respond to the social media complaints in which they have been tagged by the users. When Zee News reached out to IRCTC and Indian Railways concerned departments, they kept shifting the goalpost as no one was ready to take responsibility to clean the mess.