New Delhi:
The IRCTC or Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation website and mobile app for booking train tickets was down today ahead of the New Year – the third such outage this month.
Thousands of users failed to log in to the IRCTC website and those who could, were unable to book their tickets.
A major outage was reported when users were trying to book Tatkal (emergency) tickets at 10 am.
Many users expressed their frustration on social media.
“@RailMinIndia IRCTC website is down from 10 am today , I am not able to book tatkal tickets. When I called customer care they are saying site is under maintenance, just want to ask who in this world keep the site under maintenance in working hours? You need to change your IT team”, a user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“IRCTC down just before Tatkal booking-classic timing! Anyone else facing the same issue? #IRCTC #TatkalBooking,” another user posted, along with screenshots of the site.
“Whenever I try to book a train ticket, I face some problems in the IRCTC app. And if you open it, the app runs so slow that the tickets get exhausted, the railways should take some innovative steps for ticket booking,” a user wrote.
“IRCTC server down, No tatkal booking #IRCTC @IRCTCofficial @RailMinIndia”, another person wrote, sharing screenshots of the site.
This is third time in this month that IRCTC has faced such disruptions. On December 26, the website and mobile app were down for 1.5 hours due to “maintenance activity”. On December 9, the website was down for an hour making it difficult for users to book tickets online. According to the downtime message, the e-ticketing service was unavailable due to “maintenance activity”.
