Crores Stuck in Limbo: Indian Railways' Waiting List Conundrum, Check the Shocking Figures!
Bhopal (The Uttam Hindu): Traveling in Indian Railways is now becoming a 'waiting game'. How difficult it is to get a confirmed seat in the trains, which are called the lifeline of the country, can be gauged from the shocking figures received from an RTI. According to the information received by RTI activist Chandrashekhar Gaur, resident of Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh, in the last one year (2024-25) itself, the tickets of 3.27 crore passengers could not be confirmed till the end of the journey, due to which they either had to cancel the journey or travel in uncertainty.
These figures are extremely worrying because the number of people not getting confirmed tickets is increasing rapidly every year. According to information received from RTI, the burden of waiting lists has increased continuously in the last few years.
Helplessness increasing year by year:
Year Number of passengers not getting confirmed tickets
2024-25 3.27 crore
2023-24 2.96 crore
2022-23 2.72 crore
2021-22 1.65 crore
These figures clearly show that this problem has almost doubled in the last four years. This simply means that there is a huge gap between the demand and availability of seats in trains. Be it the festive season or a normal day, the waiting list in mail, express and superfast trains is continuously increasing.
However, the railways have taken some steps to deal with this problem. Recently, IRCTC had blocked about 2.5 crore fake user IDs to crack down on illegal agents. Apart from this, to make sure that passengers get to know the status of their tickets quickly, now the first chart of trains is prepared much earlier so that passengers can plan their journey in time, whereas earlier this chart was prepared just 4 hours before the journey.
However, these efforts are proving inadequate in the face of the growing demand of crores of passengers. On one hand, the railways are moving towards modernization and bullet trains, while on the other hand, getting a confirmed seat for the common man still remains a big challenge.