For the welfare of the passengers who plan the journey at the last minute and who are not able to secure reserved tickets, the Indian railways provide “Tatkal booking”. Under this IRCTC tatkal ticket booking scheme you have to make a payment of premium charges. IRCTC Tatkal ticket booking works on ‘first come first served basis.
You can avail the IRCTC tatkal booking facility by accessing www.services.irctc.co.in. IRCTC Tatkal ticket booking is possible on all classes except First class AC. You have to pay additional tatkal charges along with the ticket fare. 10% of basic ticket charge is collected as tatkal charge for second AC. 30% of basic fare is collected as tatkal charge for all other classes.
How to book IRCTC Tatkal tickets
Tatkal E-tickets should be booked one day in advance excluding the date of travel. E-tickets can be booked from 10.00 A.M in the morning. Check the availability of Tatkal quota before starting to book the ticket. There are no concessions in Tatkal booking. You do not have even senior citizen concession in the tatkal booking. If you are cancelling the confirmed tatkal tickets, no refund will be given. For waitlisted tatkal tickets the cancellation charges will be debited as the norms that exist in the railway rules.
Some useful Tips for IRCTC tatkal ticket booking
- You must be aware of tours and travel agents who use the IRCTC site in a wrong manner. At the peak hour it is difficult to book the tatkal ticket online.
- It is better to use mozila firefox as your web browser while booking railway tickets through Indian railways catering and tourism corporation site
- Mozilla is best to communicate with IRCTC site server and very few time out errors comparing to other browsers.
- Tatkal booking opens by 10.00 A.M. it is better to get ready before 9.00 A.M to book tatkal tickets. Refresh your page often, if the page is not opened at peak hours. If possible install auto refresh script.
- As soon as the first page is opened does not type anything but keep on refreshing your page at periodic intervals of 3 minutes. If you have installed auto refresh script the system itself will refresh the page often.
- As the time of booking open time is near you can notice that the page takes long time to load after every refresh. So to open the page by 10.00 A.M, your last refresh should be around 9.58 A.M.
- When the time changes to 10.A.M process the IRCTC tatkal booking process accordingly. Since you are competing with many others in booking the IRCTC tatkal ticket booking, it is better to be faster. It is fine to have fast internet connections with good speed and quick and fast finger to type faster.