Online tickets should be cheaper than the tickets purchased from reservation counters because:
(1) Online ticket selling is cheaper for IR as, constructing, maintaining and manning of reservation offices is a very costly affair.
(2) No onward reservation facility means, Online ticket purchase is highly beneficial to IR and costly to traveller.
(3) Online payment source is traceable and indicate a transparent & 1...
more... no. transaction which should be promoted by govt to minimise the flow of black money in Indian economy.
(4)Online ticket booking eliminated travel of person to booking office thereby saving petrol/diesel/environment.
On the contrary IR want the online tickets to be costly. If discount is given on online tickets, the people shall totally migrate further to online booking, a very small number of reservation counters/centres shall be required, resulting in a lot of saving for by IR.