Indian Railways’ Green Initiative-Dispensing of pasting reservation charts in railway coaches

Based on encouraging results obtained from trials conducted in selected stations, Indian Railways are going ahead with their Green initiative of dispensing with pasting of charts on coaches at all A1 (Coimbatore in Salem Division), A (Salem, Mettupalayam, Erode, Karur and Tiruppur in Salem Division) and B (No station in Salem Division under this category) Class Stations. This will be on trial basis for a period of 6 months from March 1^st. For Southern Railway alone, this will result in saving of more than 28 tonnes of Charting paper or Rs.1,70,000/- every year, pointing to a major effort in becoming more eco-friendly. Railways’ other efforts in this direction include encouraging “E” ticketing for both reserved and unreserved tickets, eliminating large quantity of paper charts and daily reports by Computerized charting and reporting and moving towards paperless office.

Dispelling worries of inconvenience to passengers, particularly elderly people and senior citizens, Commercial Department indicated that the required Coach and Berth number information will STILL be available at Centralized locations at all stations and with the TTEs.  Only the charts pasted on the coaches are being withdrawn. To help Senior Citizen passengers to avoid going to from coach to coach looking for their accommodation, this information will continue to be available on the charts displayed at prominent standard locations in concourse and platforms.

Further, until the reliability of electronic charts has been proven, waitlist charts will continue to be pasted at all stations.

This is in addition to the SMS messages sent to all confirmed passengers during charting, and multiple messages sent to all passengers who have booked online, during various stages as the journey date approaches. Over and above all this, the seat position can also be obtained from the website  www.indianrailways.gov.in and www.irctc.co.in as well as the Railways’ call Centre 139 through IVRS or SMS.