"No Competition": Railway Body Rebuts Congress Leader's 'Adani Takeover' Charge

The Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which handles ticketing services for the Indian Railways, on Sunday evening refuted reports that the Adani group will become its competitor with its acquisition of online train booking and information platform 'Trainman'. The now-Adani-owned platform is one of IRCTC's authorised partners, and an oiwnership change wouldn't make any difference, it said.

Trainman is one of the 32 B2C partners of IRCTC, contributing 0.13% of total reserved ticketing, IRCTC said, adding that around 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked daily in the Indian Railways, out of which 81% are e-tickets, booked through IRCTC.

"This is a misleading statement. Trainman is one of the 32 authorised B2C (Business to Customer) partners of IRCTC. Changing the stake won't make any difference. All integration and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC. It will only complement IRCTC and is not a threat or challenge to IRCTC," the PSU clairified in Hindi while quoting a tweet from senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh where he had alleged that the Adani group will first compete with IRCTC and then take over.

यह भ्रामक कथन है। Trainman IRCTC के 32 अधिकृत बी2सी (बिजनेस टू कस्टमर) भागीदारों में से एक है। हिस्सेदारी बदलने से इसमे कोई अंतर नहीं आयेगा। सभी एकीकरण और संचालन IRCTC के माध्यम से किए जाते रहेंगे। यह केवल IRCTC का पूरक होगा और IRCTC के लिए कोई खतरा या चुनौती नहीं है। https://t.co/7ERSbMj6JR

— IRCTC (@IRCTCofficial) June 18, 2023

In an oficial statement, IRCTC explained that it has partnerships with many agencies under schemes like B2B, EGovernance, B2C etc. to complement it's efforts to reach out to citizens for ease of ticketing, and "there is no competition between IRCTC and it's agents".

"Further, B2C firms are especially integrated with IRCTC business to provide reserved eticketing services to customers directly through their websites or mobile Apps through IRCTC API," it added.