The newly introduced mobile application, which helps passengers book and cancel unreserved tickets, has received overwhelming response in South Eastern Railway’s Chakradharpur and Ranchi railway divisions and raked in good revenues.

Latest data available with the SER’s Calcutta-based headquarters showed 2,037 passengers in various stations under Chakradharpur division used UTS on Mobile in the first week of October to book unreserved tickets, resulting in an earning of Rs 34,645.

The earning almost doubled to Rs 65,080 in the first week of November, with 2,690 passengers availing the facility.

In the Ranchi division, the number of passengers buying unreserved tickets through the app in the first week of October stood at only 1,453 yielding revenues of Rs 20,620.

However, in the first week of November, passengers using the app went up to 2,668 resulting in an almost two-fold rise in revenues at Rs 74,745.

Data on South Eastern Railway as a whole — which also comprises Kharagpur and Adra divisions in Bengal — revealed the number of passengers using the app jumped to 43,018 in the first week of November from 38,565 in the same period of the previous month.

South Eastern Railway’s earnings from UTS on Mobile increased to Rs 6.38 lakh in the first week of November from Rs 4.50 lakh a month ago.

Chief public relations officer of SER Sanjay Ghosh said data for the first week of November was compared with the same period of October because the facility of booking unreserved tickets through the app was extended across all the railway zones in the country from November 1.

“Compared with the first week of October, there has been an increase of around 5,000 passengers and Rs 2 lakh in earnings in the first week of November after the pan-India implementation of the service. In the entire SER zone, the service is availed by over 6,000 passengers daily, yielding an average earning of Rs 80,000-Rs 1 lakh (per day),” he said.

For making the service more popular among passengers, SER has introduced a 24/7 helpline (033 22107435).

UTS on Mobile has been introduced by the Union railway ministry to promote cashless transaction and avoid queues for tickets.

Chakradharpur and Ranchi were the first two rail divisions of SER where the service was introduced in July this year.