Indian Railways to sell tickets at petrol pumps

After enlisting the services of several banks and post offices to sell its tickets, Indian Railways now plan to utilise thousands of petrol pumps across the country for the pupose.

"We had a meeting with top officials of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL). We received positive responses from them," P K Goel, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) said. Both HPCL and BPCL have 15,000 petrol pumps across the country and if the plan materialises it would change the way people make train reservations across the country. In order to provide reservation facilities and other information related to trains to the passengers, Goel said, Indian Railways is also launching call centres throughout the country which will be connected with a single number (139)."We have already given tenders for Service Provider. We have more or less decided with Spanko Tele Services/BSNL to provide services," he said adding that "we will be setting Centres in the North-South, East-West, which would cater to the needs of the people in their respective areas".

Two such call centres-- one each in Patna and Bangalore- are already operating on trial basis and passengers are utilising them to get information related to their journey including movements of trains and reservation status. Railways have already tied up with SBI to install atleast 8,000 ATMS at stations across the country which will allow passengers to make reservations or cancel their tickets.

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