These are the Checks put in place to prevent misuse of Tatkal Booking
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 8, 2018
In December 2017, the CBI arrested 14 people including one CBI employee for misusing the Tatkal booking through an illicit software. Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, the government listed down the additional checks put in place to prevent such misuse.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)  registered a case  on 25th  December 2017, against one Mr. Ajay Garg and 14 others for misusing the Tatkal booking system.  Mr. Garg was working as an Assistant Programmer in CBI. Now, the government in its  response to a question in the Lok Sabha  has acknowledged that many websites were providing illegal software for Tatkal booking and that a request was sent to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to block such websites. The government also listed the various additional checks put in place to prevent misuse of the Tatkal booking.
The CBI case
The  CBI in its FIR  mentioned that Mr. Garg worked with IRCTC earlier and had gained inside knowledge of the technical platform, its functioning and vulnerabilities. It goes onto state that he had developed an illicit software to dupe the Tatkal booking system and had distributed the software to various people across the country.The software developed by Mr. Garg reduces the time taken to book a ticket by saving all the required details like IRCTC IDs, passenger names, payment methods, class of travel etc. These details are auto filled on the IRCTC portal as soon as the Tatkal booking starts. The software also provided for proxy IP addresses, bypassing CAPTCHA and bank OTP among other things.  The CBI FIR also mentions that one Mr. Anil Gupta who distributes the software on behalf of Mr. Garg transfers money to Mr. Garg through bitcoins, hawala etc.
IRCTC introduces further checks to prevent quick data entry
After this incident came to light, IRCTC had introduced the following additional checks to negate quick data entry, as per the response to a  question in the Lok Sabha .
As per the information shared by the government, exception reports are being generated for suspicious IDs, time check violation attempts and for bookings done in first second of opening of Tatkal booking period.  The government also mentioned that such user IDs are deactivated manually after analysis.