Refunds and cancellation charges, rule by rule
Cancellation charges on a confirmed Indian Railways ticket are flat amounts if you cancel more than 48 hours before departure — ₹240, ₹200, ₹180, ₹120 or ₹60 depending on class — then 25 per cent of the fare, then 50 per cent, and nothing at all inside four hours. RAC and waitlisted tickets are refunded less clerkage up to thirty minutes before departure.
Last verified , against the Railway Passengers (Cancellation of Ticket and Refund of Fare) Rules, 2015, notified as G.S.R. 836(E) on 4 November 2015.
This page is the charge reference. If your ticket is still on the waiting list after the chart has been made and you want to know what to do next, what to do after the chart is the page for that; it covers the alternate-train scheme and the current-booking window, which are not repeated here.
What does it cost to cancel a confirmed ticket?
Rule 6 of the 2015 rules sets a flat minimum per passenger for a cancellation made more than forty-eight hours before the scheduled departure, and then percentages of the fare inside that, always subject to the same minimum.
| Class as the rules name it | More than 48 hours before | 48 to 12 hours before | 12 to 4 hours before | Less than 4 hours before |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air conditioned first class or executive class | ₹240 | 25% of fare, minimum ₹240 | 50% of fare, minimum ₹240 | No refund |
| Air conditioned II tier or first class | ₹200 | 25% of fare, minimum ₹200 | 50% of fare, minimum ₹200 | No refund |
| Air conditioned III tier, III economy or AC chair car | ₹180 | 25% of fare, minimum ₹180 | 50% of fare, minimum ₹180 | No refund |
| Sleeper class | ₹120 | 25% of fare, minimum ₹120 | 50% of fare, minimum ₹120 | No refund |
| Second class | ₹60 | 25% of fare, minimum ₹60 | 50% of fare, minimum ₹60 | No refund |
Three things people get wrong about this table:
- The bands are counted from the scheduled departure of the train from the station you are booked from, not from the train's origin and not from its actual departure.
- The percentage never undercuts the flat rate. On a short journey, 25 per cent of the fare can be less than the minimum; you still pay the minimum.
- Four hours is the wall. Rule 6 grants no refund at all on a confirmed ticket presented inside four hours of scheduled departure. This is the single most expensive line in the rules, and it catches people who are waiting to see whether they can make it.
Note that the five bands in that table are, in effect, the railway's own ranking of its classes, from most expensive to least.
What if the ticket is RAC or waitlisted?
Rule 7 is far more generous, and the deadline is different: refund of fare less clerkage if the ticket is cancelled up to thirty minutes before the scheduled departure of the train, and nothing after that.
| Status | Deadline to cancel | What is deducted | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | 4 hours before scheduled departure | Flat rate or percentage, see the table above | Rule 6 |
| RAC | 30 minutes before scheduled departure | Clerkage only | Rule 7 |
| Waiting list | 30 minutes before scheduled departure | Clerkage only | Rule 7 |
There is a trap at the boundary. If a ticket was confirmed at any point, the confirmed-ticket rule applies to it — an RAC ticket that becomes confirmed loses the thirty-minute window and inherits the four-hour cut-off and the flat charge. What an RAC ticket gets you explains that status in full.
What is clerkage, and when is it the only charge?
Clerkage is defined in the rules as "a charge levied by a railway administration for the clerical work rendered by it in the refund of fares". Rule 4 fixes it per passenger.
| Ticket | Clerkage per passenger |
|---|---|
| Second class unreserved | ₹30 |
| Second class reserved, and all other classes | ₹60 |
Clerkage is the whole cost of a failed waiting-list booking. If you booked online, joined the queue, never got a berth and the ticket dropped out at charting, ₹60 per passenger is what the attempt cost you. That is worth knowing before you decide whether to try at all.
Does a waitlisted e-ticket refund itself?
Yes, if every passenger on it is still waitlisted. Rule 8 of the 2015 rules provides that where all passengers on an internet-booked ticket remain on the waiting list after the reservation chart is prepared, the names "shall be dropped from the reservation chart and refund of fare shall be credited to the account" from which the booking was made, after deducting clerkage.
You file nothing. You do not travel — boarding on a dropped ticket is travelling without a ticket.
Two exceptions cost people real money:
- A partly confirmed PNR is not dropped. If even one passenger on the ticket is confirmed or RAC, the ticket survives and nobody is refunded automatically. Somebody has to cancel it.
- Counter tickets are not dropped. A ticket bought at a reservation counter that is still waitlisted has to be cancelled within the ordinary time limits, at a counter. Miss the deadline and the fare is gone.
Rule 8 also covers the mixed party ticket: where some passengers are confirmed and others RAC or waitlisted and none of you travels, full refund less clerkage is admissible for the confirmed passengers too, provided the whole ticket is cancelled or a TDR is filed online for all of them up to thirty minutes before scheduled departure. Cancel the entire ticket, not the waitlisted names one at a time.
When do you have to file a TDR?
A Ticket Deposit Receipt is the online form for a refund the system cannot grant automatically. The rules require it to be filed within the time limits they prescribe, and for the mixed party case where the confirmed passengers travelled and the others did not, within seventy-two hours of the actual arrival of the train — supported by a certificate obtained on board from the ticket-checking staff recording that those passengers did not travel.
Ask for that certificate on the train. There is no way to obtain it afterwards, and without it there is no refund.
What happens if the train is cancelled, or runs very late?
These are separate rules and they are much kinder than rule 6.
- Train cancelled. The 2015 rules provide for automatic full refund of the fare on a confirmed or RAC e-ticket, credited directly to the account used for booking. No cancellation charge, no clerkage.
- Train late by more than three hours. Rule 13 covers non-commencement of the journey because of late running: full fare is refunded, with no cancellation charge and no clerkage, if the journey is not undertaken because the train is more than three hours late against its scheduled departure. You must not travel to claim this.
- The railway cannot provide the accommodation you booked. Rule 14 deals with it.
- The air conditioning fails. Rule 17 provides for refund of the difference where air-conditioning is not provided.
- You are made to travel in a lower class than you booked. Rule 18 provides for the difference.
- Journey broken because of a dislocation of traffic. Rule 15 and rule 16 cover partially used tickets and discontinued journeys.
We list these by rule number rather than by amount because the amounts depend on the fare and the distance actually travelled, and a page that invented a figure for them would be guessing.
What about a Tatkal ticket?
Rule 9 of the 2015 rules deals with Tatkal separately, and the railway's own Tatkal page states the position bluntly: "No refund will be granted on cancellation" of a confirmed Tatkal ticket, except where the train is delayed more than three hours at the originating station, where the route is diverted, where the coach was not attached, or where accommodation in a lower class had to be provided.
That single rule explains why a Tatkal waiting list behaves so differently from a general one: almost nobody gives up a confirmed Tatkal berth, because giving it up returns nothing. What a Tatkal waiting list means follows that through, and Tatkal opening times and charges has the booking clock.
Is GST charged on a cancellation charge?
Yes, at the rate of the class you booked. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs settled this in Circular No. 178/10/2022-GST, dated 3 August 2022, which says that "cancellation charges of railway tickets for a class would attract GST at the same rate as applicable to the class of travel (i.e., 5% GST on first class or air-conditioned coach ticket and nil for other classes such as second sleeper class)."
So a ₹240 charge on an AC First ticket costs ₹252. A ₹120 charge on a Sleeper ticket costs ₹120. The reasoning in the circular is that allowing you to cancel is part of the same bundle as carrying you, so it is taxed the same way — the circular calls cancellation "a natural part of this bundle".
Does it matter whether you bought at a counter or online?
It changes the mechanics, not the charges.
| What differs | E-ticket | Counter ticket |
|---|---|---|
| Where you cancel | Online, on the site or app you booked with | At a reservation counter |
| Fully waitlisted ticket after charting | Dropped and refunded automatically | Not dropped; you must cancel it |
| Where the money goes | Back to the account that paid | At the counter |
| Refund the system cannot compute | Online TDR | Counter procedure, within the same time limits |
The charges in rule 6, rule 7 and rule 4 are identical either way. What differs is who has to act, and the counter ticket is the one that needs you.
The documents this page is built on
Everything above comes from the Railway Passengers (Cancellation of Ticket and Refund of Fare) Rules, 2015 — notified as G.S.R. 836(E) and commencing on 4 November 2015 — except the tax paragraph, which comes from the CBIC circular named in it, and the Tatkal paragraph, which comes from the railway's own published Tatkal scheme page. Every one of those is linked at the foot of this page so you can read it yourself.
Two limits you should hold in mind. First, these rules have been amended since 2015, and the consolidated text we read is the one linked below; where a figure on your ticket differs from a figure here, the railway is right and we are wrong — please tell us through corrections. Second, we do not book tickets, cannot see your PNR and have no access to the reservation system; we are describing published rules. If you are deciding whether to hold a booking or let it go, when the chart is prepared tells you when the decision stops being yours, and the 60-day advance booking window tells you when it started.
Sources
Every factual claim above was checked against these documents on .