Nishant
Staff member
You may need Aadhaar to book rail tickets soon
The railway plan will be implemented in two phases, sources say. In the first stage, it will be mandatory to provide the Aadhaar number to avail concessions under various quotas such as for senior citizens, freedom fighters, differently abled, students and unemployed youths. Indian Railways provides concessions in fares to 53 categories. A senior ministry official said the policy in this regard will be approved and implemented in 15 days.
In the second phase, that will take nearly two months, railways will link all ticketing services to the Aadhaar card. This means that a passenger will have to provide the unique identity number at the time of booking a ticket – online or at the reservation windows.
Initially, Aadhaar will be required for booking reserved tickets but later it will be made mandatory for unreserved tickets too. Railway officials justified the move saying this will ensure only genuine passengers travel in trains. They claimed that a majority of people are enrolled with Aadhaar and so this will not affect them adversely.