Indian Railways to phase out general ticket counters; private agencies to take over

Kannur: The Indian Railways is set to close counters issuing general tickets (non-reserved travel), withdrawing permanent staff from these roles. In their place, more private agencies will be brought in to handle unreserved ticket sales. As part of this transition, Mobile UTS (M-UTS) assistants are being deployed at selected stations to issue unreserved tickets. Currently, this initiative is a pilot project and will be expanded in phases. The primary objective is to reduce the number of general ticket counter staff and reassign them to other departments. UTS assistants are being hired on a contractual basis.

Private ticketing agencies are already active both inside and outside railway stations. Among them, the Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sevak (JTBS) counters have been prominent since 2019. Later, Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) were installed within stations. Even retired railway staff have taken up these units on contract and manage them.

Subsequently, Station Ticket Booking Agents (STBAs) were introduced, and many stations across Kerala now operate under this model. These agents earn through commission-based systems.

Staffing scaled down alongside counter closures

The Railways had already begun efforts to downsize staff by converting the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) counters, which handled Tatkal bookings, into Integrated Unreserved Ticketing System (IUTS) counters. These serve as reservation counters during fixed hours and function as regular UTS counters thereafter.

At such stations, unreserved tickets are issued by the station master at night—a move that raised security concerns. In response, Southern Railway has now decided to relieve station masters of duties related to ticket sales and travel information services.