Indian railways taken several measures have in recent times to cut the number of illegal reservations through illicit travel agents. Northern Railways will now introduce a pink reservation form which will help to identify the ‘tatkal’ ticket seekers from the rest.

The passengers will have to fill out the form at the counter and will have to provide details such as address, contact number and ID. For now only a single form is available for tatkal as well as normal tickets. The new forms will be issued from this weekend.

The pink form will have just four columns for the number of passengers. A railways official said, “This has been done to ensure that not more than four Tatkal tickets are booked by a person as against the normal practice of six”.

VK Gupta, the GM of northern railways said that more than five lakh multiple personal IDs and 44,000 Ids have been created by agents; these have been deactivated since February 2011. The accounts were deactivated by IRCTC’s anti-fraud team to check for misuse of the ticketing service. The earlier tatkal ticket booking time began at 8 am, now it begins at 10 am daily. Gupta also revealed that 62 special trains will run for the festive season rush.