IRCTC Ticket Booking With SMS

Booking a railway ticket in India can't get easier than this as the railway ministry launched IRCTC ticket booking with SMS. The facility will allow anyone to book railway ticket without an Internet connection. Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge has just announced that train reservations can now be made by sending an SMS. The service is expected to help people without Internet access make reservations from their mobile phones. It was rumoured that the government will run a pilot project to allow SMS ticket booking starting July 01, 2013. Special budget was allotted to railways in the budget of 2013.

Launching the new service, Mr. Kharge said, "The online booking through IRCTC has now grown up to about 45% of total reserved tickets. This has eased the rush at counters to a great extent. While internet access in India is only about 10%, mobiles are now in easy reach and more than 80% people in our country use mobile phones.". One of the senior railway official said that this mechanism of ticket booking could easily take over the Internet based booking facility.

In addition, a menu-dialling service (USSD) is also being made available. The services are currently available to registered users of IRCTC. Before we provide you with the detailed steps of how to make the bookings, we'd like to inform you that MakeMyTrip launched an SMS based bus booking service [just a few days after the bus ticket booking major Redbus got acquired by iBibo group] and it's no wonder that SMS booking's getting more importance than ever before, at least in Indian subcontinent.

According to IRCTC official website, the SMS based booking service is currently being offered by three groups: Bharat BPO, Frequency Weekly and Pyro Group. There are three steps involved-

1. Send a booking SMS in a specified format (see below) along with the DOJ (Date Of Journey), Class (II, II, AC etc.), Train Number and Passenger Details. Once you send your SMS, an SMS will arrive on your mobile informing you about the availability of the seats.

FORMAT:

BOOK <TrainNo> <FromCity> <ToCity> <TravelDate(DDMM)> <Class> <Passenger1-Name> <Age> <Gender> <Passenger2-Name> <Age> <Gender> (upto 6 passengers)

Example:

BOOK 12011 NDLS CDG 1404 CC Rajesh 55 M Babita 53 F

If the first message is sent successfully, you will receive following information through SMS from IRCTC -

• Transaction ID
• Ticket Amount
• Service Charge
• Total Amount payable
• Seat Availability

Example:

TID: 2501368 Ticket Amount: 900 Service Charges: 20 Seat: AVAILABLE- 0228

2. In the second SMS, you will have to make the payment. This is easier than you may think. There are two ways to do it:-

• Use Mobile Money Identifier (Link: MMID) & an OTP aka One Time Password.
• Prepaid Wallet Cards aka mWallets

Viz: PAY <Transaction ID as received> <IMPS is the mode of payment)> <Your MMID as
received from the bank> <OTP is your one time password received for this
transaction> <IRCTCUserID>

Example:

PAY 2501368 IMPS 123456 7897 Rajesh

3. Receive a booking confirmation from IRCTC.

Example:

Congrats!! Your ticket booked successfully. PNR is: 2345678901 Ticket No:
:0672261674 Booking Status: Rajesh CONFIRM C1 76 WS Sarita CONFIRM C1 77 Ticket
Amt: 900 SC: 20 Src: New delhi Dst: Chandigarh Date of Journey: 14/04/2013 Sch Dep
07:40 hrs

Important points to be noted - only the regular tickets can be booked through this service. You will not be able to book tickets available through quota or tatkal through this service just as yet.
Booking Tickets Via Airtel Money is also easy, you may follow these steps -

1. Register for Airtel Money: Dial *400#.
2. Add balance to your wallet by recharging from nearest Airtel outlet.
3. Now dial *400# again and select 'Book Tickets' option from the menu and then go with 'Reservation'. You will be prompted to enter your IRCTC username and ID. Enter all the required details.
4. Receive booking confirmation message.

You may use the PYRO service to book tickets. The procedure for the same is as follows -

Pre-requisite:
1. BSNL SIM card installed
2. Java enabled mobile phone
3. Andhra Bank Prepaid card

Installation of the application:

1. Click BSNLPrepaidCard.jad to initiate the installation
2. Select the Register option in the application menu to get the mPIN

Transfer of the application:

In case you want to share the application to other phones, then below information is required.

1. Mobile phone which has the application
2. Bluetooth, USB cable or memory card
3. If you need to transfer the application using Bluetooth

a. Enable to the bluetooth of sender and receiver handset
b. Pair both the devices
c. Transfer the file – BSNLPrepaidCard.jad

4. If you need to transfer the application using USB cable

a. The application (BSNLPrepaidCard.jad) should be available on your computer
b. Connect the USB cable to the phone
c. Using the phone software, transfer the application on the phone

5. If you need to transfer the application using memory card

a. The application should be available on the senders SD card
b. Remove the SD card from the source phone and insert into the receiver phone
c. The application can be copied from receivers SD card to receivers phone

6. All the above 3 methods of transfer, do not require GPRS connectivity