IRCTC stopped leveraging passenger data due to privacy concerns

Railways aimed to generate Rs 1,000 crore in revenue from its passenger and freight customer data.

The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has withdrawn a previously published tender to hire a consultant to monetise passenger data. The IRCTC has over 10 million users, with 7.5 million of them being active users. The plan was to examine the data collected by various public-facing applications, such as name, age, mobile number, gender, address, e-mail ID, class of travel, payment mode, login or password, and so on.

On August 26, 2022, a senior official from IRCTC provided this update to a parliamentary panel led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. The tender was announced earlier this month by the railway ticketing app, and it has sparked controversy due to data privacy concerns regarding the monetisation of passenger and customer data. Furthermore, the IRCTC confirmed that it is no longer trying to pursue the tender.

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According to PTI, Rajni Hasija, MD and Chairperson of IRCTC, and other officials appeared before the Tharoor-led Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology. Following reports of a tender for the appointment of a consultant for digital data monetisation, the committee summoned officials from IRCTC.

Furthermore, IRCTC officials confirmed to the parliamentary committee that the tender is no longer being pursued. “The IRCTC has withdrawn the tender due to the failure of the Data Protection Bill to be approved,” an IRCTC official informed the committee.

IRCTC decided to withdraw the tender at its annual general meeting on Friday, which was scheduled ahead of the committee summons.