Now railway passengers can get their e-tickets on their cell phones instead of normal print-outs.

Named ''m-ticket', the mobile phone-based ticket booking system envisages a passenger to book his train ticket through mobile phones and carry the display ticket, sent to his cell phone through an SMS.

"The passenger need not carry a print out of his or her ticket and will have to just show the SMS," said a senior Railway Ministry official.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched this public friendly facility on Thursday at a programme in Kolkata.

The official said a person having the required Internet connection can avail the facility by downloading the mobile ticketing application on the cell phone from the new Indian Railways portal.

M-ticket is a part of the comprehensive Indian Railways web portal, with the URLhttp://www.indianrailways.gov.in/, which has been launched with a view to consolidate all the services and information onto a single window web-interface for the public.

Individual users desirous of utilising the facility of booking e-tickets on mobile phones can do so by downloading the mobile ticketing application on cell phones from the IR portal, using the uniform resource locator sent in the SMS.

On completion of booking and payment formalities, an SMS containing the ticket details will be sent to the user which is referred to as mobile reservation message.

The cost of MRM from IR web portal shall be borne by Indian Railways.

The facility of booking e-tickets through IR Web Portal will be available from 12.30 am to 11.30 pm daily.