There are numerous quotas available in Railways. I am attempting to explain some of the major operational quotas that affect berth/ seat availability in this post:
General Quota (GN)
Remote Location Quota (RL)
Road Side Location Quota (RS)
Pooled Quota (PQ)
Please note that whatever is explained below is not a sweeping general statement for that quota. Please read the post in full and look out for exception scenarios explained elsewhere in it.
General Quota
As the name explains, this is the General Quota i.e. anyone can book from anywhere to anywhere in the path of the train. Eg. T. No. 22671 Tejas Express from Egmore (MS) to Madurai (MDU) with stops at Tiruchirappalli (TPJ) and Kodaikanal Road (KQN). All six booking combinations possible – MS-TPJ, MS-KQN, MS-MDU, TPJ-KQN, TPJ-MDU, KQN-MDU do not have any specific earmarked quota available for them and will be booked under the omnibus General Quota (GN) only.
If there is no room available for further booking of confirmed tickets, the next booking will go to RAC and if RAC is also exhausted, it will move to a dedicated waitlist sequence, GNWL. Prior to preparation of first chart, which is prepared exactly 4 hours prior to the scheduled departure of the train at the source station, GNWL will be cleared against any openings in PQ (to be explained later), followed by vacancies cropping up due to cancellations in GN quota. However, this is subject to order of priority. Refer example below:
T. No. 12635 Vaigai Express. Assume there are only two waitlisted tickets.
GNWL1 Egmore to Madurai
GNWL2 Egmore to Villupuram
If a person holding an ‘Egmore to Villupuram’ ticket cancels it prior to charting (and assuming that seat is multiplexed with another Villupuram to Madurai confirmed booking, the system will check whether it can offer to the person first in queue. In our example, it is not. So, assuming no further cancellations till charting, GNWL2 will be cleared ahead of GNWL1 with a confirmed berth, since GNWL1 cannot be accommodated in the train. If there is another cancellation of an ‘Egmore to Madurai’ ticket, both GNWL1 and GNWL2 will get a ‘confirmed’ message/ SMS prior to charting itself. They will be allotted the exact seats during charting.
GN usually has the largest number of berth/ seat allocations. More on GN quota will be discussed in PQ.
Remote Location Quota (RL)
RL is typically for long distance trains, which have stations enroute that may supply patrons to fill a significant amount of the available seats. These trains may have lesser end-to-end travelers.
A classic example is T. No. 11021 Dadar (DR) – Tirunelveli (TEN) Express. End-to-end passengers in this train are not a sizeable population. This train starts from Dadar (Mumbai) in the evening, 9.30 PM, reaching Hubballi the next day around noon, reaching Yeshwantpur (Bengaluru) in the late evening and finally reaching Madurai and Tirunelveli the next day before noon. It can be observed that this train offers a convenient overnight connection for Mumbai – Belagavi/ Hubballi, Bengaluru – Madurai/ Tirunelveli combinations. So, to ensure that travelers from Hubballi and Bengaluru are getting their fair share of seats reserved for them, a bunch of seats are clubbed together to form a dedicated quota called Remote Location Quota.
One train can have more than one RL quota. The stations from which these RL quotas operate are called as Road Side locations (RS1, RS2, RS3 and so on). In our example, for T. No. 11021, Hubballi Jn. (UBL) is RS1 and Yeshwantpur (YPR) is RS2. This train has only two RS locations and hence two RL quotas RL UBL and RL YPR. Passengers booking in this train with origin station as Hubballi (RS1 station) to Tumakuru (one station prior to RS2) will be booked against their dedicated quota, RL UBL. Passengers booking in this train with origin station as Yeshwantpur (RS2 station) to Vanchi Maniyachi Jn. (one station prior to destination, Tirunelveli) will be booked against their dedicated quota, RL YPR.
If there is no room available for further booking of confirmed tickets, the next booking will go to RAC and if RAC is also full, then to a dedicated waitlist sequence, RLWL. Each RS location having a dedicated RL quota will have separate charting and RL sequence. For example, assuming all berths are booked in the train, a person booking UBL-TEN will get RLWL1 in RL UBL quota. If the next person is booking YPR-TEN, he will be getting RLWL1 in RL YPR quota (and not RLWL2 as RL YPR has a separate Waitlist sequence).
Prior to preparation of first chart at the RS location charting station, RLWL of that location will be cleared against any openings in PQ (to be explained later), followed by vacancies cropping up due to cancellations in that RS location’s RL quota. However, this is subject to order of priority as explained in GN paragraph.
Road Side Location Quota (RS)
The main objective of this quota seems to be protecting the seats of genuine end-to-end passengers, in a long distance train that also has patronage from its RS location stations. RS quota is the complementing quota of a respective RL quota for a station. In our example of T. No. 11021 above, if there are say 500 berths in a train, 300 of them in GN (DR to TEN) and 100 each in RL UBL and RL YPR quotas, to protect travelers with origin as Dadar and destination beyond Hubballi and upto Yeshwantpur, encroaching into those 300 berths meant for long distance travelers i.e. Madurai or Tirunelveli, bookings from Source to a particular RS location (having a dedicated RL quota) are restricted to the number of berths earmarked for that RL quota. In our example, the number of berths available for Dadar to Yeshwantpur will be 100 only. This will be called as RS YPR quota, acting as a mirror of its corresponding RL YPR quota of 100 berths. Extending the logic, the number of berths available for Dadar to Hubballi will be 200 as the berths available for RS YPR quota (100) will also be made available for booking along with RS UBL (100).
If there is no room available for further booking of confirmed tickets, the next booking will go to a dedicated waitlist sequence, RSWL. Prior to preparation of first chart, RSWL will be cleared against any vacancies cropping up due to cancellations in RS quota. However, this is subject to order of priority. Similar to RL, RS can also encroach on PQ berths prior to charting, if RS is not available and PQ is available.
Pooled Quota (PQ)
The most debated quota of the four operational quotas, PQ is aimed at restricting short distance travelers encroaching on berths available for end-to-end travelers, which may otherwise result in revenue loss. Assume all seats in Vaigai Express are in GN quota. If all the seats are booked by travelers from Egmore to Chengalpattu, the train will run empty from CGL to MDU, resulting in revenue loss.
In trains where PQ is available, GN quota is earmarked for long distance travelers by having First Nodal Point (FNP) and Last Nodal Point (LNP) defined. GN quota is available only for a person who is travelling from a station that is ‘Source to FNP, both inclusive’ and to a station that is ‘LNP to destination, both inclusive’. Any source-destination (S-D) combination that does not have a dedicated GN or RL or RS quota will fall under PQ, if it is defined for that train.
In our example, T. No. 11021, the FNP is Lonavala (LNL) and the LNP is Dindigul (DG). Let us look at the various quotas available for S-D combinations in this train. Note that some stations in the path of the train given below are combined to make more meaningful.
Dadar (Origin)
Lonavala (FNP)
Pune
Satara to Dharwar
Hubballi (RS1)
Haveri to Tumakuru
Yeshwantpur (RS2)
Banaswadi to Karur
Dindigul (LNP)
Madurai to Vanchi Maniyachi
Tirunelveli (Destination)
Quotas – Berths (Actual data):
GN – 87
RL UBL and RS UBL – 20
RL YPR and RS YPR – 75
PQ - 100
Source: Dadar to Lonavala
Destination:
Pune to Hubballi – RS UBL 20 + RS YPR 75 + PQ 100 = 195
Haveri to Yeshwantpur – RS YPR 75 + PQ 100 = 175
Banaswadi to Karur – PQ 100
Dindigul to Tirunelveli – GN 87 + PQ 100 = 187
Source: Pune to Dharwar
Destination:
Satara to Hubballi – RS RS UBL 20 + RS YPR 75 + PQ 100 = 195
Haveri to Yeshwantpur – RS YPR 75 + PQ 100 = 175
Banaswadi to Tirunelveli – PQ 100
Note that destination from DG to TEN, unlike the earlier case, does not fall under GN quota because the source station is after FNP. Hence only residual quota of PQ will be applicable.
Source: Hubballi to Tumakuru
Destination:
Haveri to Tirunelveli – RL UBL 20 + PQ 100 = 120
Source: Yeswantpur to Vanchi Maniyachi
Destination: Banaswadi to Tirunelveli – RL YPR 75 + PQ 100 = 175
If there is no room available for further booking of confirmed tickets, the next booking will go to a dedicated waitlist sequence, PQWL.
Prior to preparation of first chart, which is prepared exactly 4 hours prior to the scheduled departure of the train at the source station, PQWL will be cleared against any vacancies cropping up due to cancellations in PQ quota. One can easily infer that the waitlist sequence for PQ will be the most interesting of them all. Let us see that with an example:
Assuming our train (T. No. 11021) is fully booked. A person who books 6 tickets for Dadar to Karur will be allotted PQWL1 to PQWL6. If a person books Bansaswadi to Salem next, he will get PQWL7. The sequence number will be misleading in these cases as there are multiple combinations that contribute to PQ. This will be more amplified in a fairly long distance train with no RL quota like Pandian Express or Nellai Express.
Note that there is no concept of RAC in RS and PQ quotas.
Charting:
Having seen what happens until charting, let us take a look at how vacancies are allotted during charting:
Vacancies from GN quota are cleared against GNWL first, followed by Tatkal (TQWL), RSWL and then PQWL.
Vacancies from RL are cleared against RLWL
Vacancies from PQ are cleared against PQWL, then GNWL.
First chart is prepared exactly 4 hours prior to the scheduled departure of a train at a charting location. Vacancies are cleared in the order mentioned above and surplus vacancies are offered to current reservation at 10% discount. Second chart is prepared exactly 30 minutes prior to the scheduled departure of a train at a charting location. This chart is handed over to TTR and no more online booking will be allowed for that charting location. Surplus vacancies are passed on to the next RS location to clear its RLWL.
Other quotas:
I have not discussed other quotas like Tatkal (TQ), Premium Tatkal (PT), Lower Berth (SS), Ladies (LD) and all other internal quotas like HO, HQ etc. as they do not pose any interesting insights from a common traveler perspective when it comes to analyzing complicated dynamics in how they work.
