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New Delhi/Nagpur: Coming to the aid of harried passengers, railways launched the cancellation facility through 139 so that one does not have to rush to the counter to cancel confirmed tickets.
Yes. Apart from the Indian Railways ticket booking website and the ticket counters at stations, dialling the three digits will let you cancel your confirmed train tickets in time.
On call, the passenger will have to give details of the confirmed ticket for cancelling it and will receive a one-time password (OTP). Passenger can then claim the refund at the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) counter after revealing the OTP.
Besides 139, one can also cancel confirmed tickets using IRCTC website also and both the facilities were made operational from Friday.
Launching the service, Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu said this is an attempt on our part to provide relief to passengers for cancellation of tickets.
He said both the initiatives were promised in the Railway Budget 2016-17 which were fulfilled on Friday.
After the change in refund rules, a lot of passengers were finding it difficult to reach counters to cancel the reserved tickets within the stipulated time and as a result they are losing money.
According to the new refund rules, railways has doubled the ticket cancellation charge with the aim of helping genuine passengers get confirmed tickets.
Prabhu said railways has its own challenges for carrying out expansion programme.
“We have to expand the railway infrastructure for which fund is required. We have to increase the income for this and all these have to be carried out in a transparent manner. It is a challenging task,” he said.
Railways has changed the software accordingly for the cancellation through IRCTC website and 139.
