Change the Mobile Number on a PNR for OTP

An agent books a ticket. Weeks later the passenger wants to cancel. An OTP is sent to verify the cancellation — and it arrives on the agent’s phone, forty kilometres away, because that is the number attached to the PNR.

That is the problem this page is about, and the honest answer has two halves: what you can fix now, and what you should have done at booking.

First, understand which number is involved

Three different numbers get called “the mobile number on a booking”, and they behave completely differently:

The account’s registered number. Attached to the IRCTC ID that made the booking. Changing it is a profile change, and it does not retrospectively rewrite tickets you have already booked.

The number captured on the PNR. Entered at the time of booking, usually for SMS about that journey. This is what people mean when they ask this question.

The number the OTP is actually sent to. For agent bookings this follows the agent ID, which is precisely why the OTP lands with the agent and not the traveller.

Most of the confusion comes from assuming those three are the same thing. They are not.

What you can do on an existing booking

Be realistic here. A PNR is a railway record, and the fields you can edit after the fact are limited by railway rules rather than by the interface.

• Contact details on a PNR are not freely editable the way a profile is. There is no “change the passenger’s number” button that rewrites a confirmed booking.
• For a cancellation and refund on an agent booking, the OTP route is the agent’s. That is the design — it verifies that the person cancelling is the one who booked. Our OTP verification guide covers the sequence.
• If the registered number on your own ID is wrong or unreachable, fix that first. Until it is fixed, every future booking inherits the same problem.
• If the OTP number is wrong on an agent ID, there is a format for correcting it — see how to change the mobile number for OTP, and the form itself is on the downloads page.

The part that actually solves it

The fix is a counter habit rather than a setting.

Take the passenger’s number and record it against the PNR in your own book. Not in your head, not in the chat history — a simple register, or a note in your phone with the PNR as the title.

Then when the cancellation comes, you have the passenger’s number, they have your number, and the OTP landing on your phone is an administrative detail rather than a crisis.

Tell the passenger at booking that cancellation goes through you. Ten seconds at the counter prevents a call three weeks later that begins with someone convinced they have been cheated.

Give them the PNR in writing. Printed or messaged. A passenger who has the PNR can check the booking themselves and is far less likely to panic.

What to do when the OTP has already gone astray

1. Confirm which ID made the booking. If it was your agent ID, the OTP is yours to handle.
2. Verify the passenger’s identity against what you booked — name, journey, PNR.
3. Complete the verification on their instruction, and tell them it is done.
4. Give them the reference for the cancellation rather than a verbal assurance.

If the booking was made on a personal account that you no longer have access to, that is IRCTC’s support rather than ours, and we will say so rather than take a fee for a call we cannot make.

What nobody can do

Nobody can redirect an OTP. Not us, not any provider, not anyone promising it for a fee. An OTP that can be rerouted on request is not a security measure — and anybody offering to do it is describing either something impossible or something you should not agree to.

If something has gone wrong with a booking, ring the number published on this site and we will tell you what is actually possible. Support runs round the clock.