Over 1.7 crore waitlist tickets not confirmed in 2022-23: Railways

NEW DELHI:  Despite tall claims made by the Indian Railways of taking measures to ensure that all waitlisted tickets get confirmed, nearly A total of 2.7 crore passengers failed to undertake journeys by trains in 2022-23 because of the non-confirmation of their waitlisted tickets.

Its IRCTC wing, in reply to an RTI application filed by MP-based activist Chandrasekhar Gaur, admitted that a total of 1.76 crore Passenger Name Record (PNR) numbers were generated in the waitlist category in 2022-2023 to facilitate the journey of nearly 2.72 crore passengers. However, their waitlisted tickets were automatically cancelled after not being confirmed at the time of chart preparation.

In 2021-22, 1.06 crore PNR numbers generated in the waitlisted category for 1.65 crore passengers got automatically cancelled due to insufficient seats and berths in different parts of the country. As a result of such a huge number of automatically cancelled tickets, the Railways also suffered a significant revenue loss as fares were refunded to the passengers.

As per Railways sources, it cancelled 1.13 crore PNR numbers in the waitlisted category in 2014-15 and 81.05 lakh in 2015-2016. In 2016-2017, it had to cancel around 72.13 lakh such PNR numbers, 73 lakh in 2017-18 and 68.97 lakh in 2018-2019.

According to official figures shared with the media, the Railways cancelled 38.89 lakh PNR numbers booked for 61 lakh passengers in 2020-21 after the waitlist status was not confirmed for those tickets.
A senior official said that the Railways is making all possible efforts to accommodate the maximum number of waitlisted passengers by running trains on various routes.