Reservation against Cancellation (R.A.C.) in Indian Railways

Indian Railways

Indian Railways , abbreviated as IR , is a departmental undertaking of Government of India, which owns and operates most of India's rail transport. It is overseen by the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India....

:- The passengers whose names figure under R.A.C., are provided reserved sitting accommodation initially and are likely to get berths becoming vacant due to last minutes cancellation of reservation of passengers not turning up in time before the departure of the train,. We need to pay some minimal fee to acquire the facility. Even the TC can hand over a reserved seat to interested passenger in case the reserved one do not turn up

A quick explanation of RAC and Waitlists

• WL = Waitlist
• RAC = Reservation against cancellation

An RAC ticket gets you on the train (A WL ticket doesn’t) and in your chosen class, but there’s a chance you could end up with just a seat. (very unlikely if you book early)

A berth is split into 2 seats for 2 RAC ticket holders, if there’s any last minute cancellations, or if any quota allocations remain unsold, or if any confirmed ticket holders are given a free upgrade (more later), an RAC ticket holder is given the empty berth, the other RAC ticket holder can then convert the 2 seats into a berth.

RAC tickets are only issued for 2-tier air con (4 seats per carriage), 3-tier air con (6 seats per carriage), non air con First Class (4 seats per carriage), and non air con Sleeper Class (up to 12 seats per carriage).

How do RAC and Waitlists all work?

When all the available seats/berths in an individual train/class have been sold, the railways start selling RAC tickets (2A, 3A, FC & SL only), when all the RAC tickets have been sold, then a waitlist is started for all the train classes, and you’re sold a waitlisted ticket.

As people cancel tickets, a RAC/WL ticket will move closer to a confirmed berth. Also, when the final reservation chart is prepared, any un-sold quota berths will be used to reduce the RAC/waitlist.

Tickets will be sold in the following order..(4 RAC places in this example)

1. Available 02
2. Available 01
3. RAC 01
4. RAC 02
5. RAC 03
6. RAC 04
7. WL 01
8. WL 02

and so on...

Every Ticket has 2 numbers

All RAC/WL tickets have 2 ’numbers’, the first is the position you join the waitlist, the 2nd is your current waitlist position.

So lets imagine you go to buy a ticket online (or at a reservation office), you find the perfect train, select your chosen class, enter your date of journey, then notice that the ticket offered is WL 10/WL 4, you buy the ticket, so we’ll use this as an example. (with 4 RAC places)

WL 10/WL 4 means that you join the waitlist at position 10, but due to cancellations (before you bought the ticket) you have already moved to waitlist position 4, the first number will not change, if there were another 3 cancellations, your new waitlist position will be WL 10/WL 1, another 3 cancellations would take you to WL 10/RAC 2, a further 2 cancellations would take you to WL 10/CNF (confirmed reservation, though you wouldn’t find out your carriage and berth number till a couple of hours before the train departs)

Think of standing in a queue, as you go to join the queue you are given a number indicating the position you join the queue (eg. WL 10), this number will remain the same as that IS the position you joined the queue, all those in front of you have either confirmed, RAC or better waitlist positions than you, if any of the people in front of you decide to leave the queue, you move forward, and closer to a confirmed seat/berth, some in front of you may have already left the queue before you joined, so if 6 people had already left the queue, you’d be joining the queue in position WL 10, but you’d already be at position WL 4.

The above ticket would move through the waitlist as follows: -

WL 10/WL 4

WL 10/WL 3

WL 10/WL 2

WL 10/WL 1

WL 10/RAC 4

WL 10/RAC 3

WL 10/RAC 2

WL 10/RAC 1

WL 10/CNF