Plan to make photo ID must for rly ticket

At present,the Railways does not have any mechanism of verifying the identities of passengers travelling with non-electronic tickets — the majority — and those travelling in the unreserved compartments. The proposal plans to plug the gap by making it a rule to mention the valid ID numbers,preferably government-issued ones like PAN during the booking,to be printed on the tickets.

In their official response,11 of the 14 zonal railway who commented on the proposal have favoured the move while some have advocated starting this in various forms,including in a phased manner and also on trial basis.

“One problem faced during accidents and terror attacks,like the Samjhauta blast and Jnaneswari Express mishap last year,was that identifying the bodies became a difficult job. In many cases the contact details furnished in reservation slips were either inadequate or inaccurate,making investigations difficult. Even terrorists can book tickets under false names and travel. This move will take care of all such issues,” said a senior official.

After studying current booking trends,officials have noticed that around 50% of total tickets booked will be impacted by this move. And the argument is that a large number of those tickets also avail of concessions,which require producing photo IDs anyway.

Under the current national drive of universal ID by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI),every citizen would eventually have a photo identity,and Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi had recently expressed willingness to initiate dialogue with the UIDAI to make the unique ID number synchronised with the ticket booking software.