Indian Railways on Tuesday announced a revised ticket cancellation policy that discourages passengers to go for last-minute cancellations, prevents the misuse of booking system, and optimises seat availability. Under the tiered refund system, confirmed tickets which will be cancelled closer to the departure time will attract higher penalties.
For cancellations that are 8 hours prior to the departure, railways will not allow any refunds. This is up from 4 hours currently. While tickets cancelled between 24 hours and 8 hours before departure will be eligible for just 50% refund; cancellations that took place 72 hours prior to the departure will attract a flat cancellation fee.
As per officials, the move is aimed at curbing last-minute speculative bookings and ensuring tickets for genuine passengers at no extra cost. The revised rules will be implemented in phases between April 1 and April 15 this year.
Relief in physical cancellation process
Apart from this, the transporter has allowed passengers to cancel their physical tickets across counters of any station. Earlier, tickets could be cancelled only at the originating station. These measures are part of the broader reforms agenda of the rail ministry for 2026.
To provide convenience to passengers, the railways will allow travel class upgradation up to 30 minutes prior to the departure (for counter tickets). Previously, the upgrades were permitted before the charting (9-18 hours before departure). Last year, railways revised the advance preparation of reservation charts which now happens 9-18 hours before departure instead of (earlier) 4 hours.
More options for comfortable travel
The officials said that this step will provide more options for comfortable travel to passengers till the last moment of the journey. In another measure, railways will now allow change in the boarding point up to 30 minutes prior to the train departure, a move that will help passengers to opt for the station of their choice.
Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that ticket black marketing and misuse of the Tatkal system had been a major concern for the ministry. To address this, the railways has introduced technology to detect bots and fraudulent software. Since July last year, Aadhaar verification was made compulsory for Tatkal bookings.
Further, a detailed data analysis led to the identification and removal of nearly 30 million fake accounts from the IRCTC system, resulting in a significant improvement in ticket availability. The officials said that the recent reforms are aligned with the upgradation of the passenger reservation system (PRS) that will increase the bookings capacity from 32,000 to over 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute by June this year.Rail