Railways reservation system to be shut for 6 hrs till November 21

New Delhi: In an effort towards making the rail service normal, especially during the post-Covid situation, Indian Railways decided to keep shut down its Passenger Reservation System (PRS) during the lean business hours for the next seven days.

On Monday, the ministry officially announced, "The activity will be performed starting from the intervening night of November 14 and 15 to the night of November 20 and 21, starting at 23:30 hrs and ending at 05:30 hrs."

While asked, a rail official told the Millennium Post that in the wake of the pandemic crisis, the railways started almost a total of 3,000 'special rail services' across all zones with adding 'zero' in the initial of the train numbers. With the Indian Railways' efforts to normalize passenger services and revert in a phased manner to the pre-covid levels of service, the PRS needs to update the new train numbers. Therefore, the ministry has decided to keep the PRS system shut for six hours. "The system will upgrade 500-600 train numbers in each day," a rail official added.

"This is to enable upgradation of system data and updating of new train numbers etc. Since a huge amount of past (old train numbers) and current passenger booking data are to be updated in all Mail/ Express trains, this is being planned in a series of carefully calibrated steps and implemented during night hours to minimize the impact on ticketing services," an official statement mentioned.

During the period railway personnel will ensure the advance charting for the trains to start during the affected timings. Except for the PRS services, all other enquiry services including 139 services will continue uninterrupted.

Ministry of Railways has requested its customers to support the ministry in the effort to normalize and upgrade the passenger services.