Starting February 15, passengers can book only six train tickets a month contrary to the existing 10 on Indian Railways’ e-ticketing website - irctc.co.in

"This has been done keeping in view the analysis of the usage of quota of 10 tickets which indicated that 90% of users are booking upto 6 tickets in a given month and only 10% are booking more than 6 tickets. It is suspected that the 10% users might be involved in touting activities. Therefore, to deter such touts and to facilitate genuine users, it has been decided that a maximum of 6 tickets can be booked by an individual user in a month," a railway official said.

Along with this rule, the IRCTC has taken various measures to ensure touts don't have a free run on their website at the cost of genuine passengers. Some of these measures include:

1. ARP Booking: Only 2 tickets per user ID in a day from 8 am to 10 am.

   
   




2. Tatkal Booking: Only 2 tickets per user ID in a day from 10 am to 12 noon.

   
   




3. Quick Book Option is disabled from 8 am to 12 noon

   
   




4. All types of ticketing agents like YTSK, RTSA, IRCTC agents etc., have been prohibited from booking tickets during the initial thirty minutes(8 am to 8.30 am) of opening of booking for general bookings, and from 10 to 10.30 am and 11 to 11.30 am for Tatkal booking in AC and non-AC classes respectively.

   
   




5. E-wallet and cash cards booking not allowed from 8 am to 12 noon.

   
   




6. Only one booking in one login session except for return/onward journey between 08 am to 12 noon