Reward on booking Railways ticket with Aadhaar verification

The Indian Railways on Wednesday confirmed that Aadhaar number is not compulsory for booking tickets for rail journey.

"There s no proposal to make Aadhaar number compulsory for booking tickets," Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain informed Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

From January 1, 2017, Aadhaar verification is required for booking concessional railway tickets for a senior citizen, which has been introduced on a voluntary basis, the minister said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

Also, in order to motivate passengers for linking their Aadhaar ID and mobile number for booking of tickets, railways has limited the number of bookings to twelve tickets on the website of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), Gohain said.

This is for those individual users whose accounts are verified through Aadhaar ID subject to conditions that one of the passengers on the ticket to be booked is verifiable through Aadhaar.

"The IRCTC has also introduced a reward scheme to incentivise linking of Aadhaar with a user ID of IRCTC," the minister said.