Indian Railways is preparing a major overhaul of its decades-old Passenger Reservation System (PRS) to tackle persistent complaints about slow ticket booking, system crashes and bot-driven misuse.

The upgrade, estimated to cost around Rs 1,000 crore, aims to significantly improve the digital infrastructure that supports ticketing for nearly 2.3 crore passengers daily.

Frequent travellers have long complained about failed booking attempts, especially during peak hours such as Tatkal openings. Many users say confirmed tickets often sell out within minutes due to system glitches or automated bots that exploit loopholes.

The new PRS architecture, currently in the testing phase, is expected to go live between April and June, according to officials at the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS). Once implemented, the system will be capable of processing up to 1.25 lakh ticket bookings per minute, five times the current capacity of about 25,000.

The upgrade will also address widespread misuse by automated booking software used by agent networks. Earlier investigations found several such tools that bypassed captcha and verification processes, enabling bulk ticket purchases before genuine users could complete bookings.

Originally launched in 1985, the PRS runs on ageing software built using Fortran 77. The new platform will shift to open-source technologies, including enterprise Linux systems, allowing easier expansion and vendor flexibility.