Bots accounted for 58% of India’s rail booking requests: Here’s how centre is tackling this menace | Gravitas

Have you felt frustrated while trying to book a railway ticket online in India, as tickets often get sold out in Tatkal within minutes?

Let’s tell you about a shocking revelation on how automated bots account for a major chunk of the ticketing requests.

The issue came to the fore in Lok Sabha after a Congress MP questioned the government over inconvenience regarding tatkal booking.

This facility allows passengers to book a train ticket one day in advance.

He enquired about action taken against touts and steps taken by the centre to permanently block automated booking bots.

Complaints have often surfaced about unauthorised agents using automated bots to buy tatkal tickets, which are then resold at inflated prices.

Now, the data depicts a story in itself.

As per Union Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, 15.38 billion monthly requests were received for booking a rail ticket online on average. However, 8.88 billion – that is a whopping 58% of the requests – came from bots, which were rejected.

If we look at the data of the last six months, April, May and June saw bots accounting for over 60% of the total ticketing requests.

Last month alone, 12.61 billion requests came from bots. February was an aberration when only 45% of the requests came from bots.

But what action has the government taken to combat this attempted ticket fraud?

Vaishnaw highlighted that a rigorous reverification of user accounts has been done. As a result, about three crore suspicious user IDS have been deactivated since 2025. In this period, over 13,000 suspicious email domains have also been blocked.

Additionally, over 22,000 touts have been arrested by the railway protection police during the last five years.

The minister also revealed that 530 complaints regarding suspicious booking had been registered on the national cybercrime portal in the last two years.

To begin with, the government now allows only Aadhaar-authenticated passengers to book tatkal tickets online.

To curb misuse in Tatkal bookings, Aadhaar-based one-time password verification has also been introduced on select trains.

This is not all.

The railways have also deployed other protective layers like anti-bot solutions, network firewalls and intrusion prevention systems.

Also, Vaishnaw added that the booking system is hosted in a secure data centre facility in New Delhi with restricted physical access and CCTV monitoring.

However, with nearly 89% of all rail tickets in India now booked online, it is clear that the government needs to do a lot more to ensure transparency and convenience for passengers.