Another step towards LessCash
society.
For the last one month or so, Indian
Railways Go India Card was in the testing stage. Northern Railways was the
chosen division for the test phase.
Minister
of Railways, Shri S.D.Sadananda Gowda formally launched the Go India Card at a
function in Mumbai on 13th August.
GO India Card is a
pan India smart card to enable passengers to pay for tickets for long distance
reserved, unreserved, and suburban journeys as a pilot project.
The chief features of Go India Smart
Card are:
- It can be used a nominated UTS
counters and Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) and nominated PRS
counters for reserved tickets
- It is a contact-less smart card: no
need to swipe or insert into a slot.
- The pilot project to be implemented on
the following two sectors:
a)
New
Delhi – Howrah sector at 6 stations.: New Delhi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Dhanbad,
Asansol, Howrah
b)
New
Delhi – Mumbai sector at 6 stations: New Delhi, Kota, Vadodara, Ratlam, Surat,
Mumbai Central.
- Initially, the card can be issued by
paying Rs. 70/- where passenger can get Rs. 20/- balance. After that the
card can be recharged for Rs. 20/- or in multiples of Rs. 50/- up to Rs.
5000/-. Maximum limit can be Rs. 10,000/-.
- Go-India smart card has lifetime
validity.
- Go India Smart Card can be utilized to
for hassle-free purchase of all modes of rail tickets in the pilot
sectors.
- Go-India Smart Card will be used for
Indian Railway application i.e. Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS),
Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and Retiring Room (RR) counters and existing
Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM)s.
- In the future, Go India Smart Card
will be rolled out to all parts of India.
- Go-India smart card will be a separate
card from existing ATVM smart card. Go-India smart card can be used across
UTS, PRS, RR and existing ATVM of Indian Railway but existing ATVM smart
card can be used only across ATVMs of that region.
- Go-India smart card is interoperable
across various applications and UTS thin clients can work in disconnected
mode for 3 days hence issuance of duplicate card will be allowed only
after 3 days i.e. 3 days excluding the day to mark card for duplicate.
- Validity of Go-India smart card will
unlimited but, if no transaction are done within 6 months on Go-India
smart card then smart card will be temporary deactivated which can be
activated again by paying Rs. 50/- as activation charge.
- At the time of issuance/recharge of
Go-India smart card, actual amount will be top-up on smart card and
discount will be given on face value of UTS tickets instead of existing
bonus logic used for ATVM smart card.
- Currently, passengers are allowed to
take non-concessional journey ticket, platform ticket and renew
non-concessional season ticket through ATVM.
- However, there is no bonus advantage
given on renewal of season ticket and journey tickets in non-suburban
section beyond 150 KMs through ATVM kiosks.
- On Go-India Smart card at ATVMs/UTS
counters, instead of giving bonus advantage, discount (5%) will be given on
ticket face value and passenger can take non-concessional season ticket
through UTS counters also but as per policy, passenger will get discount
on suburban journey ticket, non-suburban journey ticket upto 150 KMs,
platform ticket only, BPT ticket, miscellaneous ticket and money receipts
will not be allowed through Go-India smart card.
- In case of PRS/RR tickets, there is no
bonus/discount advantage given at the time of booking and during
booking/issuance of ticket, ticket fare/amount will be directly debit from
the Go-India smart card.
- Tuning into the life-style changes of
the public, the Go-India Smart card would afford rail passengers
advantages like avoiding problems of Coin Change and save valuable
passenger time (queue time).
