Operation Dhanush

In the entertainment world, sporting world, and elsewhere, ticket touting is common. It refers to when people buy and hoard tickets or passes to an event to sell them at a higher price later. Ticket touting is barred by law because of its base in malpractice and cheating. However, while it is illegal, it is still very common.

The concept of ticket touting is also popular in the travel industry. Holiday seasons are the times of the year when travel tickets are most highly demanded. Workers get holidays from work, and students get vacations, and so on. This makes it the most conducive time to return to one’s hometown and celebrate the holidays with family and loved ones. The law of demand goes such that surge pricing brings it back to equilibrium with high demand.

Touting tickets goes against this law of demand and makes it unfair to all parties involved. Not only is this practice unfair to consumers, but also the companies selling these tickets in the first place.

Ticket Touting in Indian Railways

In 2019, around the Indian festive season, authorities noticed a large volume of ticket touting going on in the Indian Railways. This was particularly evident in the e-ticketing portal of the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). Fraudulent individuals had used dubious methods to engage in ticket touting to take advantage of the festive rush.

During the season of Diwali, individuals country-wide wished to return home to visit their families. They were, however, faced with ticket touts. The Railway Protection Force (RPF) intervened and carried out Operation Dhanush in the Central Railway Zone against these ticket touts.

Operation Dhanush

On the advice of the RPF, the Central Zone of the Indian Railways carried out an operation meaning to put an end to the touting of online tickets. This was called Operation Dhanush, and it took place in October 2019.

The Indian Railway network is one of the longest in the world. The railway system is divided into various zones for efficient identification, such as Northern, North Eastern, Eastern, South Eastern, etc. Each zone has divisions under it, and each division has a headquarter in the area. There are five divisions of the Central Indian Railways, namely:

• Mumbai Division – Headquarters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST)
• Bhusawal Division
• Nagpur Division
• Solapur Division
• Pune Division

Operation Dhanush was carried out in the Central Zone in all its divisions. All live tickets were blocked by the IRCTC and were cancelled later. Passengers were advised not to buy tickets from touts. If passengers were found on the train with tickets bought via touts, they were disallowed from the journey without a refund. The basis for no refunds was that the tickets were blocked needing legal action. Genuine tickets were let go after the identification of the ticket-holders was verified by the authorities.

Result of Operation Dhanush

The raids under Operation Dhanush were very successful. The racket was uncovered along with:

• 23 agents or ticket touts were arrested holding 287 live tickets. These tickets were worth over Rs 9 lakh
• 1008 more tickets were found where the journeys had been completed. These tickets were valued at over Rs 21 lakh

The Western Railway Zone also followed suit when suspicions rose about a train from Bhuj, Gujarat to Mumbai, Maharashtra in November the same year. This came after Operation Dhanush in the Central Zone was a success. The results yielded in these raids in the Western Zone were:

• 282 PNR IDs of 1692 passengers were uncovered as tout tickets. This amounted to over Rs 7 lakh in e-tickets blocked

To prevent ticket touts to this day, these two railway zones still carry out surprise raids similar to Dhanush.

Conclusion

Operation Dhanush was an effort on the part of IRCTC to do right by its passengers. The arrest yield that it brought was adequate to show others not to repeat malicious actions such as this. It is important to note that it was restricted to the Central Zone (and later to the Western Zone) and that it was not a pan-India operation. This also teaches citizens to be warier about where they purchase their tickets.