IR has seen cancellation of around 1.4 lakhs of tickets per day in 2023, which are automatically cancelled and around average Rs. 100 per cancellation is recovered by IR. This may not even include payment gateway charges.
One, IR has to provide at least double of these seats in 3 years to bring down the waitlist cancellations to a minimum. There can never be zero waitlisted cancellations.
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In each train, depending on the class and type of train, there are seats set aside till chart preparation. These include for Railway staff, MP or MLA bookings, etc. etc.. These can be released one day prior i.e., at the time of opening Tatkal seats to public one day prior at 10 am for AC class and 11 am for Sleeper class tickets. This will help reduce the waitlist cancellations as people keep in the hope of those set aside reserved seats which are released on chart preparation.
To curtail around 1.5 lakh cancellations on any day, we need 300 new trains introduced with average berth capacity of 1000 per train. These have to be introduced permanently as Daily trains in all high density corridors, by identifying 60 to 80 such corridors on permanent basis.
Introduction of VB trains is supposed to bring down waitlist but it has in fact increased in 2023 compared to 2022, that means there is higher cancellations in Overnight and long distance travel. So VB trains are acting more as capacity enhancement for IR and the passengers from other Road and Air Transport are using these services than regular train passengers.
So we need around 300 Amrit Bharat and long distance SF daily trains to bring down the waitlist menace in iR.