Indian Railways has made slight changes in fares with effect from December 26, 2025, by increasing 1 paise per km for ordinary class tickets and 2 paise per km for Mail/Express non-AC and all AC classes for journeys above 215 km. No changes will be applicable on suburban services, monthly season tickets or ordinary journeys up to 215 km. For non-AC travel of 500 km, passengers will have to pay around Rs 10-14 more. The change, which is the second in 2025 after the July hike that brought in revenue of Rs 700 crore, is expected to yield an additional revenue of Rs 600 crore by March 2026.

All this comes amid ongoing efforts to tackle black marketing of Tatkal tickets. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav told Parliament on December 11, 2025 that 3.02 crore suspicious IRCTC user IDs have been deactivated since January 2025, due to which daily new registrations have come down from about 1 lakh to 5,000. Mandatory Aadhaar-based authentication and phased OTP verification for online tatkal booking from July 2025 has improved the availability of confirmed tickets in 65-95% of monitored trains, along with deployment of anti-bot tools like AKAMAI.

Despite these measures, passengers continue to complain of frustration: Tatkal quotas are often exhausted within seconds, and platforms like Telegram are accused of automated bots and unauthorized agents selling tickets at premium prices. Recent social media complaints have highlighted glitches in the site during peak booking times, although no verified reports of specific bot names (e.g. ‘Gadar’, ‘SpaceX’, ‘Tesla’, ‘Avenger’) or direct threats from agents have emerged in late 2025. Railways encourages reporting of suspicious PNRs through the National Cyber ​​Crime Portal and maintains multi-layer cyber security.

Although reforms have curbed some wrongdoing, end users still face challenges during peak demand times, underscoring the need for continued vigilance against black-marketing gangs.