Indian Railways advance booking sees a massive change. Check when you should book tickets

The Indian Railways reduced advance booking time for trains tickets by decreasing allowed days from 120 to 60 days. The changed rules will mean that passengers will now be able to book IRCTC train tickets only 60 days in advance of the train’s scheduled departure, as against the current advance booking period of 120 days.

After the development, the shares of IRCTC were trading in the red at 14:20 pm, down 2.2% at Rs 867.60.

The new rule by Indian Railways will come into effect from November 1, 2024.


There will be no change in the case of certain day time express trains like Taj Express, Gomti Express, among others where lower time limits for Advance Reservations are already in place. There will also be no change in the case of limit of 365 days for Foreign Tourists, the order said.

However, if the tickets are already booked prior to November 1, new rules for adavnce train ticket booking will not impact those bookings.

The Indian Railways plans to ferry 7.5 billion passengers in 2024-25, 9% higher than a year ago.

IRCTC sees AI:

One Al model we used for checking the occupancy of trains had led to over 30 per cent increase in the rate of confirmed tickets, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told ET recently.

He explained that the reservation chart is drawn four hours before a train's departure. After that, the AI model can optimise seats as it is able to tell x number of seats will be vacant after say two stations. So, the allocation of seats to those in the waiting list can be accordingly.

Traditionally, the Railway Board allocates seats per station to ensure that at least some passengers get accommodated from each stop of a train. Using AI, the railways now identifies stations where demand is higher and rejigs this allocation.