IRCTC New Rules: If you book a ticket in less than a second, AI will catch it! Railways’ strong attack on brokers and automatic bots

A very big and relief news has come to the fore for crores of middle class families and common passengers of the country traveling by Indian Railways. Getting a confirmed train ticket during the peak season of June and July has always been an uphill battle, mainly due to the nexus of brokers and their automated software operating at the ticket counters and the online IRCTC portal. To root out this serious problem, Indian Railways has taken a historic and tough step from May 2026. Railways has made live a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) based fraud detection model, which will completely kill the automatic bots that grab tickets in the blink of an eye before the general public. How will this high-tech AI anti-fraud system work? This new security system developed by the technical wing of Railways is very smart and advanced, which tracks the behavior of every user in real-time during online ticket booking: Strict rule of one second: If a ticket is booked in less than a second as soon as the Tatkal or Normal booking window opens on the IRCTC portal, then this AI model will immediately sense that this action has not been done by a human but by an automatic machine or coding script. The system will immediately block such suspicious bookings. Essential Digital Security: Additionally, to curb fake IDs and fake accounts of brokers, stringent security measures like Aadhaar Verification and OTP have been integrated into the Instant Booking System to ensure that only the genuine passenger or his/her family gets the ticket. 908 Summer Special Trains for Peak Season Along with tightening the technical security, Railways has also geared up to reduce the pain of heavy rush of passengers and long waiting lists in the summer season. Operation of special trains: According to the Railway Ministry, a total of 908 summer special trains are being run on various busy routes in the country till July 15, 2026. These special trains will make more than 18,000 trips across the country during this peak season, providing lakhs of additional passengers an opportunity to travel with confirmed seats. Boarding stations can be changed at the last moment: Big relaxation in the rules. IRCTC has made a big change in one of its important rules to make the journey of the passengers easier, which is no less than a boon for those passengers who due to some reason are not able to catch the train from their main station at the last moment. Under the new rule, now passengers can easily change their ‘boarding station’ (from where to board the train) through online mode up to 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time of their train. Earlier there was a huge time restriction for this process. This new thing from Railways "citizen-first" (Citizen-First) approach will definitely prove to be a historic milestone towards making the common man’s rail travel safer, transparent and enjoyable than ever before.