The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website and mobile application faced a major outage on Thursday, leaving passengers unable to book tickets, especially Tatkal reservations. Several users took to social media to express frustration, reporting issues with booking tickets for trains, particularly Tatkal, which became unavailable as the system crashed. The platform Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions, registered a sharp spike in reports, indicating widespread issues.
When users attempted to open the IRCTC app, they were greeted with an error message that read, “Unable to perform action due to maintenance activity,” signaling that the platform was down for an unspecified reason. The outage prompted a wave of complaints from frustrated passengers, many of whom rely on the service for last-minute travel plans.
A Twitter user voiced their dissatisfaction, posting, “@RailMinIndia @AshwiniVaishnaw @PMOIndia when this fraud will stop, always at 10am irctc website crashes and when you open again all tatkal tickets get booked but only premium tickets with double prices are available, this is clear scam by @IRCTCofficial @raghav_chadha.”
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Another passenger added on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), “It is 10:11am … still IRCTC is not opening…. IRCTC should be enquired and checked… definitely scams are happening. By the time it opens all the tickets are gone…”
A third user highlighted the discrepancy between India’s advancements in space exploration and its inability to fix basic infrastructure, remarking, “India reached the moon, but the Indian Railways ticket booking app can’t handle Tatkal booking without crashing. It’s 2024, and a stable server shouldn’t be rocket science!”
This outage marks the second major disruption of the month for IRCTC. The e-ticketing platform had previously undergone a scheduled one-hour maintenance on December 9, leading to similar frustrations among users. The latest disruption occurred during the peak time for Tatkal ticket bookings, which open at 10 AM for AC classes and at 11 AM for non-AC classes. As a result, many passengers were unable to secure their tickets, exacerbating the already high demand for last-minute travel.
The IRCTC has yet to respond to the incident, and no official explanation has been provided regarding the technical issues or the cause of the disruption. Passengers have been calling for an investigation into the matter, especially amid concerns that the outages are being timed to favor premium ticket bookings, which are available at significantly higher prices.
The frequent breakdowns of the IRCTC platform have raised questions about the efficiency and reliability of the service, especially during critical booking windows. With millions of passengers relying on the service every day, the ongoing issues have sparked calls for better infrastructure, transparent practices, and more stable systems to handle the growing demand for train travel in India.
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