The Indian Railway Ministry has launched an SMS rail alert service that will send timely updates to passengers on their respective PNR status. It will also allow passengers to receive booking status messages on their mobile devices.

Previously passengers had to dial 139 or visit the railway's official website to check the status of your waitlisted ticket.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Minister of State for Railways, said, "After experimenting this SMS service for a couple of days, we have now decided to bring it out to passengers whose waitlisted tickets get confirmed."

Railway Member (Traffic) DP Pandey said that the new service would definitely benefit passengers keen to know about the status of their tickets/bookings as well as it would ease load on the railway website.

The SMS will be sent to passengers starting from five days before the date of their scheduled travel. Passengers will receive the status alert at least three hours before their journey time. The status alert will a passenger's coach number and berth number.

CRIS, the technological division of the railways, has developed the software for the new SMS-based service, which is available free of cost. According to preliminary estimates, as many as four lakh SMS alerts will be sent to passengers on a daily basis and the service will be made available online in phases.