Indian Railways gives another chance to 70,000 candidates to apply again

Indian Railways is giving a second chance to 70,000 candidates whose job applications were rejected for uploading faulty photos. The Railway ministry has asked these aspirants to rectify their mistake by July 20.

Indian Railways Recruitment has received 4.8 million applications for 26,500 posts of assistant loco pilots and technicians.

"We realised that among the total applications that were found ineligible, around 127,000 candidates were found ineligible for invalid pictures. Out of the 127,000 people, now, 70,000 have been asked to make the changes in the pictures and upload them again," Rajesh Dutt Bajpai, Director Information and Publicity, Railway Board said to PTI.

An email and a message have been sent to the 70,000 applicants, who were given a second chance.

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IRCTC orders enquiry into complaint on quality of food in Duronto Express

The Railway's food catering arm IRCTC has ordered an enquiry into a complaint by a passenger of the 12246 Yeswantpur-Howrah Duronto Express about the quality of food served to him in the train, an IRCTC official said on Tuesday. 

IRCTC Group General Manager (east zone) Debasish Chanda said that there were, however, tweets by at least 23 passengers travelling by the same train that reached Howrah last evening stating that the quality and taste of the food served to them were good. "The gentleman may not have liked the taste, but the food served to him was definitely not stale," Chanda said.

Railways seek reimbursement for IRCTC service charge

With the finance ministry starting the process for listing of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) and Ircon International (Ircon), the loss of service charge for IRCTC has become a cause for concern for railway officials.

The government waived the service charge following demonetisation to encourage cashless transactions.

The railway ministry has written to the finance ministry seeking reimbursement of the loss amounting to over Rs 500 crore on an annualised basis. IRCTC shares half of this service charge revenue with the railways.

Officials said the process for appointment of merchant bankers was under way with ICICI Securities and IDFC making presentations. The Department of Public Asset Management has set March 16 as the final date for submission of requests for quotations in this regard.

The decision to list these companies came as a surprise to the railways when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made the announcement in his budget speech last month. The railways had written to the finance ministry on the issue of service charge before the budget as well.(READ MORE)

IRCTC to launch new app for faster booking of tickets

Latest Business News - Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) Limited will soon launch a new ticketing app which will have several features added on the existing one for faster booking of tickets.

Equipped with latest technology, existing IRCTC Connect will now become IRCTC Rail Connect to facilitate booking of train tickets in a faster and easier way, a senior Railway Ministry official said.

IRCTC, which handles online train ticket bookings, will formally unveil the IRCTC Rail Connect app next week to cater to the growing demand of passengers to make the ticketing app more user-friendly and faster.

The new ticketing app will be based on next generation e-ticketing system. It will be synchronised with the ticketing website also, which is missing in the current system.

Travellers will continue to be able to search and book train tickets, check their existing reservations or cancel them, and get upcoming journey alerts in the new application.(Read More)