Indian Railways have already introduced paperless ticketing. In case of e-tickets booked through Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website including through mobile application based ticket, Short Message Service (SMS) sent by IRCTC and screen shot of the e-ticket (Virtual Reservation Message) displayed through laptops/palmtops/mobile phones has been permitted as valid authority for travel alongwith prescribed identity proof in original subject to appearance of name of the passengers on the reservation chart and thus there is no need to take a print-out of Electronic Reservation Slip (ERS)/e-ticket in this case.
Further, with a view to facilitating convenient booking of unreserved tickets by passengers without having to stand in long queues to purchase Railway tickets, Indian Railways have introduced the facility of booking of paperless unreserved ticket, season ticket and platform ticket through mobile phone in some stations in Central, Western, Eastern, Southern, South Eastern, South Central and Northern Railways as a pilot project.