India, July 23 -- More than 57% of requests received by the Indian Railways' e-ticketing system over the past six months were generated by automated bots and blocked before they could access the reservation platform, the Centre informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Replying to a starred question on unauthorised Tatkal ticket bookings, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that, on average, 8.88 billion of the 15.38 billion requests received by the e-ticketing system each month between January and June 2026 were bot-generated, accounting for 57.74% of the total traffic. June recorded the highest share of bot traffic, with 12.61 billion of the 19.12 billion requests (65.95%) identified as bots. The corresponding figures were 12.08 billion of 20.07 billion requests (60.18%) in May, 10.64 billion of 17.33 billion (61.39%) in April, The minister said the Railways' reservation system is equipped with industry-standard cybersecurity controls and multiple layers of protection to prevent automated form-filling tools, cyberattacks and fraudulent Tatkal bookings. Among the key measures introduced are mandatory Aadhaar authentication for online Tatkal bookings, Aadhaar-based OTP verification on selected trains, anti-bot solutions and round-the-clock security monitoring, along with enhanced network security and other safeguards. The government also said 3.04 crore suspicious user IDs had been deactivated and another 6.22 crore accounts had been placed under revalidation during 2025-26 and 2026-27 up to June 30. Besides, 13,343 suspicious email domains were blocked, and 530 complaints related to suspicious bookings were lodged on the National Cyber Crime Portal during the same period.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.