This is big: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an antitrust probe against Indian Railways and The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) for alleged unfair trade practices by IRCTC while providing online train ticketing and others services, reports The Hindu Business Line. Read the CCI order here. CCI says this probe was ordered since it believes prima facie, there is a case of violation of the provisions of the Competition Act based on the complaints filed against the Railways ministry and IRCTC. The organization has now directed the director general to investigate this matter and submit his report in the next 60 days. While we couldn't find a mention of this in the CCI order, the report also says that CCI is studying a complaint on IRCTC being the only online platform to provide (train ticketing) services. IRCTC Is Allegedly Restricting Developments To E-ticketing As per the CCI order, Railways is allegedly restricting technical and scientific developments related to booking of e-tickets using IRCTC and is imposing unreasonable conditions on its recently launched e-wallet scheme. It is also levying premium charges for calls made to 139 and limiting the provisions of IRCTC authorized agent services. Remember that IRCTC had introduced a one-time registration process last year and made it mandatory for all users who intend to book train tickets through third party websites like Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra and others, to have an IRCTC account before booking a train ticket online. Following this, MakeMytrip and Cleartrip had added an extra step of IRCTC account registration during ticket booking and allowed users…
