Tatkal booking time, charges and ID rules

Tatkal booking time is 10:00 for AC classes and 11:00 for non-AC classes, one day before the journey, excluding the travel date. The charge is 10 per cent of basic fare in second sitting and 30 per cent in every other class, between fixed floors and ceilings — ₹100 to ₹200 in Sleeper, ₹300 to ₹400 in AC 3-Tier.

Last verified 3 September 2026.

When does Tatkal booking open?

One day before the date of travel, not counting the travel date itself. The railway's own Tatkal page gives both the rule and a worked example, and the example is the clearest thing on the page: "for train leaving on 6th, Tatkal Booking will Commence at 10 AM for AC Classes on 5th and at 11 AM for NON-AC Classes on 5th." The page dates this arrangement to 15 June 2015, under Commercial Circular No. 34 of 2015.

Note the last row. Tatkal berths that nobody bought do not vanish; they go back into the general pool when the chart is made. That is one of the few genuine sources of berths at the last minute, and it is why the queue you are in can move at charting even though nothing moved for a week. When the chart is prepared has the timing rule.

What does a Tatkal ticket cost on top of the fare?

The Tatkal charge is a percentage of the basic fare — ten per cent for second class, thirty per cent for every other class — held between a floor and a ceiling, and it only applies beyond a minimum distance. These are the figures published on the railway's own Tatkal page for journeys starting from 24 December 2015 onwards.

Two things follow from that table that people miss. First, the page states the charges "will be levied uniformly both in peak period & non-peak periods" — the Tatkal charge itself does not surge, whatever else does. Second, there is no Tatkal charge line for AC First Class, because the scheme does not run in it.

The page also records a detail about Executive Class that tells you how small the pool is: "Tatkal facility is also available in Executive Class of Shatabadi Express trains also, by earmarking 10% of the accommodation available i.e. 5 seats per coach." Five seats. That is the entire Tatkal quota in that class on that coach, and it explains why the class fills in seconds.

Do you need Aadhaar to book Tatkal?

For online booking, yes, since 2025. The Ministry of Railways announced three changes on 11 June 2025, and they are the most consequential thing to happen to Tatkal in years.

The practical consequence: if your account is not Aadhaar-linked, you will discover it at 09:59 on the morning you need it least. Link it in advance.

Why does the first half hour matter so much?

Because that is the window in which the quota is gone, and because the railway has explicitly ring-fenced it against bulk booking.

The Ministry stated in the same June 2025 announcement that "authorised ticketing agents of Indian Railways will not be permitted to book opening-day Tatkal tickets during the first 30 minutes of the booking window. For AC classes, this restriction applies from 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM, and for non-AC classes, from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM."

There is a live inconsistency here, and you should know about it. The railway's own Tatkal scheme page still publishes the older, shorter restriction — "AC Tatkal Booking: 10:00 hrs to 10:10 hrs" and "Non-AC Tatkal Booking: 11:00 hrs to 11:10 hrs" — a ten-minute window rather than thirty. We read both pages on 3 September 2026. The June 2025 Ministry announcement is the later of the two and says thirty minutes; the scheme page appears not to have been updated. We are reporting both rather than choosing, because we cannot tell you which one the booking system is enforcing this morning.

The same list on the scheme page contains one line that has nothing to do with Tatkal and is quietly useful: "ARP Booking: 08:00 hrs to 08:10 hrs". Agents are restricted for ten minutes from eight in the morning on opening-day advance-reservation tickets — which is the closest thing to an official statement we found that general booking opens at 08:00. We are flagging that as an inference from an official page, not as a published rule in its own words. The 60-day advance reservation period covers that window properly.

What identity proof do you need?

None at the counter, one on the train. The scheme page is explicit: "At the time of Tatkal ticket booking no need to furnish identity proof, Only one passenger needs to produce any one of the following proof of identity in the original during the journey."

The ten accepted documents, as the page lists them, are: a voter photo identity card issued by the Election Commission of India; a passport; a PAN card; a driving licence issued by an RTO; a serial-numbered photo identity card issued by a Central or State Government; a student identity card with photograph from a recognised school or college; a nationalised bank passbook with photograph; a credit card issued by a bank with a laminated photograph; an Aadhaar card; and a serial-numbered photo identity card issued by a public sector undertaking, district administration, municipal body or panchayat administration.

Two conditions attach to that. For internet bookings "the passenger shall enter the identity proof type and number, which is to be used for travel", and those details are printed on the ticket and shown in the reservation chart. And the document has to be the original — a photograph of it is not what the rule says.

Can you get a refund on a Tatkal ticket?

Almost never on a confirmed one. The scheme page states that "No refund will be granted on cancellation of confirmed Tatkal tickets", referring back to Commercial Circular No. 53 of 2006 dated 30 June 2006, and then lists the exceptions where full refund of fare and Tatkal charges is granted:

• the train is delayed more than three hours at the passenger's journey originating point — and the page is careful to say the originating point, "not the boarding point if the passenger's journey originating point and boarding point are different";
• the train is to run on a diverted route and the passenger is unwilling to travel;
• the train is diverted and the boarding station, the destination, or both, are not on the diverted route;
• the coach in which the Tatkal accommodation was earmarked is not attached and no accommodation is provided in the same class;
• the party is accommodated in a lower class and does not want to travel — and if they do travel in the lower class, they get the difference in fare and in Tatkal charges back.

This single rule is the reason a Tatkal waiting list behaves the way it does. A confirmed Tatkal ticket is worth nothing if you give it up, so hardly anybody does, so the queue behind it hardly moves. What a Tatkal waiting list means follows that consequence through. The wider refund picture for ordinary tickets is on refunds and cancellation charges.

One more line from the page, easy to miss and expensive: "TDRs are not being issued for waiting list tickets."

What else limits a Tatkal booking?

• Four passengers, maximum, on one ticket. "It will be possible to book a maximum of only four passengers per PNR for Tatkal tickets."
• No change of name. "The facility of change of name is not permitted on the bookings made under Tatkal scheme."
• No duplicate tickets, except in exceptional cases and then on payment of the full fare including Tatkal charges again.
• Actual distance, not end to end. Tatkal tickets "will be issued for actual distance of travel, instead of end-to-end, subject to the distance restriction applicable to the train", and the same berth may be sold in multiple legs until the chart is prepared.
• Web service agents get one ticket per train per day on the internet.

What we could not pin down

Two gaps, stated plainly rather than filled in.

We found no official page giving the Premium Tatkal charge or its rules, although Premium Tatkal is listed by the Ministry as a reservation quota available to the general public. We are not going to describe a scheme we could not read the terms of. What your waiting-list code means lists the quotas without pretending to price them.

And we found no published figure for how many Tatkal berths a coach carries in classes other than Executive Chair Car, where the scheme page gives ten per cent of the accommodation. If a site tells you the Tatkal quota is a fixed number of berths in Sleeper, ask it where that came from. If your booking is already waitlisted and you are weighing Tatkal against waiting, what to do after the chart sets out the other options, and the nine classes compared shows which class the charge table above will hit you hardest in.

Sources

Every factual claim above was checked against these documents on 3 September 2026.

• https://www.indianrail.gov.in/tatkal_Scheme.html
• https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2135694
• https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2065879
• https://indiankanoon.org/doc/30426228/

Written and reviewed by Vijesh Rathore · Page last updated 3 September 2026 · how often we re-check.