New Delhi: Indian Railways has intensified its campaign against fraudulent activity on its ticketing platform, deactivating 3.02 crore suspicious user IDs since January 2025, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw told Parliament on Thursday. He said the action targets networks of fraudsters who deploy bots and automated software to create fake accounts, secure Tatkal tickets in bulk and resell them at inflated prices, making it difficult for genuine passengers to book seats for urgent travel.
According to Vaishnaw, the Railways has begun deploying anti-bot systems such as AKAMAI to screen out illegitimate users and improve the booking process for authentic customers. The minister added that the government has rolled out an Aadhaar-linked one-time password verification process for online Tatkal reservations in phases. As of December 4, 2015, this mechanism was in place for 322 trains. He said the availability of confirmed Tatkal tickets has risen in nearly 65 per cent of these trains after the verification layer was introduced.
A similar Aadhaar-based OTP system is being implemented at reservation counters. Vaishnaw said that by December 4, 2025, the measure had been extended to 211 trains. Complaints related to suspiciously booked PNRs have also been registered on the National Cyber Crime Portal, he noted.
To protect the Railways’ digital infrastructure, the ministry has put in place multiple cybersecurity layers, including network firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, application delivery controllers and secured web applications. The reservation system operates from a dedicated data centre equipped with restricted access, CCTV monitoring and end-to-end encryption. Vaishnaw said regular security audits by CERT-In empanelled agencies are conducted, while CERT-In and the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre continuously monitor internet traffic for threats.