Cracking down on misuse of user IDs by agents to corner general and tatkal tickets, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) has deactivated as many as 44,000 multiple user IDs created by agents in the past 10 days.

In addition, the vigilance teams of IRCTC have also deactivated more than five lakh such IDs. Through this ploy, a handful of people sought to corner the tickets causing distress to the general public, according to Joint General Manager Public Relations, IRCTC, Pradeep Kundu.

The IRCTC — which operates the e-ticketing website of the Indian Railways — has about 1.35 lakh registered agents on its rolls. Some of these agents had generated multiple user IDs using the same mobile numbers and e-mail IDs. Apart from deactivating them, the culprits have been penalised Rs. 20,000 as per rules.

Since July 10, when the revised booking time for tatkal tickets was enforced, the IRCTC has been monitoring the bookings and even cancelling suspicious ones.

The move to segregate the tatkal booking timings, which start at 10 a.m., from the advance reservation period which opens at 8 a.m., has led to a massive jump in the booking of online tickets.

The IRCTC has recorded a high of 4.95 lakh ticket bookings on a single day and the average is around 4.47 lakh per day as against the average of 3.6 lakh tickets prior to the new arrangement. (PTI)