The India Railway Department has recently shared an update regarding the reservation list. According to the latest update, the Railway Board will reveal the seat reservation list around eight hours before the departure of the train - which is currently prepared four hours before departure.
While citing an example, the officials have outlined that if a train departs before 2 pm, then the reservation chart for the train will be prepared at around 9 pm on the previous day.
The new plan was addressed by the senior official of the Ministry of Railways, who highlighted that this new plan would offer clarity to the passengers who will be traveling from a distance before leaving their homes.
As per the reports, the official was quoted saying, “Now, passengers will get the update on waitlist status well in advance. There were many complaints regarding the chart preparation time. The passengers coming from remote areas or suburbs of major cities to the Railway Station to take long-distance trains had to go back many times because of non-confirmation of the waitlisted ticket. Now, such passengers will have time to make alternative arrangements.”
In addition to this, the official has also confirmed that Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has asked the officials to implement this new move in phases to avoid disruption. The upgradation of the passenger reservation system has been reviewed by Vaishnaw himself, and it has been expected that this new implementation will increase the ticket booking capacity by more than 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute, increasing the current 32,000 tickets per minute capacity to more than five times.
The official said, “The ticket inquiry capacity will increase ten times from 4 lahks to over 40 lakh inquiries per minute. Further, OTP-based authentication will be done for Tatkal bookings from the end of July 2025. The authentication should be done using Aadhaar or any other verifiable Government ID available in the user’s DigiLocker account.”