I am sure most of us have done train ticket booking or rail ticket booking at the railway stations across India many number of times.
With the advances in technology online train ticket booking or online train reservations on IRCTC have become a faster way of getting train tickets or railway ticket booking done.
It took me a lot of time to figure out how to book train tickets for my parents in the senior citizen quota or lower berth quota on IRCTC website.
Problem is that when you login to IRCTC you just get these options :
General Quota
Tatkal Quota
Ladies quota.
You don't see an option for Senior Citizen Quota or Lower Berth Quota. If you have two senior citizens then you don't know how to book tickets for both senior citizens and get lower berth allocated for both of them. So here is what you need to do to book tickets for senior citizens in 3AC coach.
1. Let us assume you have two passengers over age of 60, that is, two senior citizens traveling together. The trick here is that we will not book both passengers on the same ticket. In order to see availability in Senior Citizen quota or Lower Berth quota we need to book one ticket per senior citizen(that is two tickets for two passengers). Downside of this approach is that you may end up booking tickets in different coaches but the advantage is that you will be able to book tickets from the Senior Citizen quota or Lower Berth quota even when the General quota is showing waiting list. Lets look at the following steps.
2. You need to select the source, destination and select the quota as General.
3. Now select your train and select class as 3A.
4. Now on the screen where you enter passenger information just enter name of one of the passengers(don't enter both of the passengers together). Make sure you check the flag for senior citizen to Yes.
5. Before you go to payment screen you will see the availability in the Senior Citizen quota or Lower Berth quota on your screen. If you see availability is >=2, then you may go ahead and book the ticket for first passenger and then follow the same process for second passenger.
More often than not you will get reservations done by using these steps and that too on lower berth quota. Reason is that this quota is applicable only for :
Female(above 45 Year)/Senior Citizen/Travelling alone
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Also how many of you know that there is a google chrome extension which can be used to auto-fill the railway reservation form on IRCTC so that every time you login you don't need to enter the passenger details. It saves a lot of time during tatkal bookings and is extensively used by the travel agents on IRCTC. How can you get it? Simple, go to google and search for Magic autofill google chrome extension. Install it and follow the simple steps and you are good to go for your rail reservation.
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