Railway Ministry make it big all thanks to the last minute Indian Railways passengers.
According to a recent RTI, Indian Railways in the period of last four years has managed to earn whopping sum of Rs 25,392 from tatkal quota tickets. While Rs.21,530 crores were made out of tatkal tickets, Tatkal premium tickets contributed Rs. 3,862 crore to the final figure.
The figures show a massive 62 per cent increase in revenue from the tatkal premium quota during the period between 2016 and 2019 which has led to a big development in terms of earnings and revenue generation for Piyush Goyal-led Railway Ministry.
Tatkal ticket charges
Introduced in the year 1997 tatakal ticket booking is a service which enables last-minute travellers to receive tickets by providing accommodation. The service which was initially restricted to selected trains was later extended across the country in 2014.
Tatkal ticket charges have been fixed as a percentage of the fare at the rate of 10 percent of the basic fare for second class and 30 percent of basic fare for all other classes subject to minimum and maximum by the Indian Railways network.
Under the tatkal premium version tickets, which was introduced in the year 2014 in selected trains, 50 per cent of tatkal quota tickets were sold using the dynamic fare system.
According to the report, the details of earnings from tatkal quota tickets made by Indian Railways are as follows:
1. In the year 2016-2017, the revenue from tatkal premium tickets touched Rs 6,672 crore, going up to Rs 6,915 crore in the following year.
2. In the year 2017-2018 Indian Railways earning from tatkal quota rose to Rs 6,952 crore, according to an RTI filed by Chandrashekar Gaur, a Madhya Pradesh based RTI activist
3. However, it is in the tatkal premium quota tickets that Indian Railways saw a 62 percent rise in its earnings going till about Rs 1608 crore from the years 2016-2017 to 2018-2019.
Currently, the tatkal ticket booking scheme covers around 2,677 Indian Railways trains. As per the figures provided by the Railway Ministry, out of the total 11.57 lakh seats available, around 1.71 lakh seats are open for tatkal ticket scheme booking.
