IRCTC site down | Another outage ahead of New Year leaves people infuriated
As per Downdetector, the booking site encountered issues at 10.10 am, right after Tatkal bookings began, and the service resumed only after almost an hour of downtime
Ahead of the New Year, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website and mobile app for booking train tickets faced outage on Tuesday (December 31) due to “maintenance activities”, leaving scores of users dejected.
A major outage was reported when users were trying to book Tatkal tickets at 10 am. Thousands of users failed to log in to the IRCTC website and those who could, were unable to book their tickets. When trying to access the platform, most were greeted with a “downtime message”.
“Booking and cancellation for all site will not be available for next hour. Inconvenience caused is deeply regretted. FOR CANCELLATION/FILE TDR, PLEASE CALL AT CUSTOMER CARE NO. 14646, 08044647999 & 08035734999 OR MAIL AT eticketshirete.co.in,” read the prompt on the IRCTC portal.
Also read: Clerkage charge applies to all waitlisted ticket cancellations: Railway minister
Passengers vent ire
Many users expressed their frustration on social media platforms, slamming the railway authorities for it.
“@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.
“Lost the chance to book a confirmed tatkal ticket for my father even though I was ready with all the info & to avoid payment delay, kept the irctc wallet full. Thanks to the IRCTC website glitches,” fumed another.
“2024 is ending, but some things never change. Tried booking a tatkal ticket on IRCTC, and guess what? The site is not accessible due to traffic! Tatkal feels more like a lottery than a service. Is anyone else still struggling with this?” wrote another user.
Third time in a month
According to Downdetector, a platform that tracks real-time status updates on outages and service disruptions for various apps, online services, and websites, the site recorded nearly 1,600 reports of outages as of 11.40 pm.
Also read: Mahakumbh 2025 | IRCTC to set up tent city at Prayagraj; Rs 6,000 per night for couple
All the major cities, including Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Ahmedabad, experienced issues. The site recorded that most problems were reported about the website, followed by issues reported about the app and ticket booking.
As per Downdetector, the booking site encountered issues at 10.10 am, right after Tatkal bookings began. The service resumed after almost an hour of downtime.
This is the third time in a month that the website and mobile app faced such disruptions. The website and mobile app were down for 1.5 hours on December 26 due to “maintenance activity”. On December 9, the website was down for an hour making it difficult for users to book tickets online.
