New Delhi: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) experienced a major system outage on Thursday, disrupting online train ticket bookings across India and affecting thousands of passengers during the peak holiday season.
The widespread disruption, which affected both the IRCTC website and mobile application, left users unable to access the platform's e-ticketing services. According to Downdetector, a service monitoring platform, over 2,500 users reported issues with the booking system.
"Due to maintenance activity, e-ticketing service will not be available," read the message displayed on the IRCTC website. This marks the second such disruption in December, raising concerns about the platform's reliability during high-demand periods.
The timing of the outage has particularly impacted travelers seeking Tatkal tickets, a crucial booking option for last-minute travel plans during the holiday season. The platform serves as the primary booking channel for millions of railway passengers across the country.
In response to the situation, IRCTC has issued an advisory for passengers needing to cancel their tickets. The corporation has provided multiple customer support channels, including their helpline numbers (14646, 08044647999, 08035734999) and email address ([email protected]) for obtaining Ticket Deposit Receipts (TDR).
Affected passengers can contact these support channels to address their ticket-related concerns until the e-ticketing services are restored. IRCTC has not specified the duration of the maintenance activity or when normal services will resume.
This disruption highlights the critical dependency on digital infrastructure for railway bookings, as lakhs of passengers rely on IRCTC's online platform for their daily travel arrangements and future journey planning.
The story is developing, and updates will be provided as more information becomes available about the service restoration timeline.
