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"Go India" Travel Card
This is a good news for the travelers in India!
Replicating the Metro Card model, the Railways now have a “Go-India Card Scheme” allowing passengers to pay for tickets and make transactions cashless. The scheme has been started in New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Howrah routes now, and passengers can book tickets, retiring rooms and cloakrooms.
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What is Go-India Smart Card?
Introduced as a pilot project, this value proposition would cover 11 stations of the New Delhi - Mumbai and New Delhi - Kolkata sections spread over 6 Zonal Railways. on Northern Railway, New Delhi has been identified as one of the centres under this Pilot for the Go-India Smart Card project.
How to get Go-India Smart Cards?
2 counters, one for Unreserved Ticketing System( UTS) and one for Passenger Reservation System (PRS) have been made operational towards the Ajmeri Gate side at New Delhi and a separate counter for issue of Go-India Smart card has been opened. The passenger can purchase UTS ticket through Go-India Smart card from the nominated UTS counter and also can purchase PRS Ticket from Go-India PRS counter installed adjacent to PRS current reservation counter towards the Ajmeri Gate side.
Features of Go-India Smart Cards
1. 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.
2. Go-India smart card will be a separate card from the existing ATVM smart card.
3. 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.
4. Go-India Smart Card akin to ATVM can be purchased by paying a security amount of Rs.50/- with the first minimum recharge/top-up by Rs. 20/-
5. Both Go-India Smart Card and ATVM Cards can be recharged in the multiple of Rs. 50/- but the maximum recharge amount is Rs. 10,000/- for Go-India Smart Cards as against the maximum recharge amount of Rs. 5000/- for ATVM card.
6. On Go-India Smart card at ATVMs/UTS counters, instead of giving bonus advantage, 5% discount will be given on ticket face value.
7. On Go-India smart card, no concession benefit is available on PRS ticket, booking of RR, renewal of season ticket and non-suburban journey ticket beyond 150 kms.
8. Security deposit and balance refundable can be taken back at any time during the validity of Go-India Smart Card while it can be refunded up to one month after expiry of validity of ATVM Smart Card.
Refund on unused/partially used Smart Card will be done on deduction of Rs.15/- as processing costs.
The Railway reserves the right to modify/withdraw any facility currently allowed on both the Smart Cards.
However, the Limitations are:
- It cannot be used for e-tickets on IRCTC as it comes with a readable chip that won’t work in online transactions at present. It also cannot be used for concessional tickets and vouchers.
- Purchase of platform tickets, BPT tickets, miscellaneous tickets 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 tickets, ticket fare/amount will be directly debited from the Go-India smart card.
- No refund will be given nor duplicate card issued in case of loss/theft/mutilated card on both Smart Cards.
The Railways, taking a cue from the IPL and Formula One racing, also plans the branding of premium trains to earn extra revenue. It is in advanced talks with top companies to brand popular trains like Rajdhanis, Shatabdis, etc. Trains could be named after multinational giants for, say, 10 years at a time, Railway Board sources said.
Source
This post first appeared on An Ace Guide To Exotic Places In India, please read the originial post: here
