Can’t buy Republic Day Parade tickets online: Its digital India

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ PM Narendra Modi’s strategy of cashless India and digital India having a lots of praise for Indians.

But the vision has not been put into practice in the first Republic Day post the announcement. One of the high points of India’s Republic Day celebrations is the grand parade on New Delhi’s Rajpath, in which the country demonstrates its diversity, progress and military might.

In tune with the long established practice, the Ministry of Defence had in early January, started the sale of tickets for the Republic Day Parade at Rajpath and Beating Retreat Ceremony at Vijay Chowk.

While this year’s Republic Day ticket sales has adopted cashless modes of payments – debit and credit cards – it hasn’t gone digital. You cannot buy the tickets online. They can only be purchased from one of the seven designated counters for the general public and another inside Parliament for the members.

Even while being limited in scope, the sale of Republic Day tickets online would have been an important symbolic step in reinforcing the idea of Digital India. Not that the government or its subsidiaries lack the ability of such sales. You can even buy platform tickets online.