IRCTC website, mobile app face massive outage due to technical issue

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The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website and mobile application experienced a massive outage on Thursday morning. According to IRCTC, the outage was caused by a technical glitch.

Many social media users reported being unable to book tickets during the outage.

An IRCTC spokesperson confirmed to Mid-Day that a technical issue occurred in the Next Generation eTicketing System (NGeT) between 10:01 AM and 10:40 AM, and again from 10:51 AM to 11:23 AM. This led to the temporary shutdown of both the website and the mobile app. "During this period, reserved tickets were available at Passenger Reservation System ticket counters at railway stations," the spokesperson added.

Downdetector, a platform that monitors online outages, recorded a surge in reports during the IRCTC downtime. Users reported encountering a message stating, "Unable to perform action due to maintenance activity," when attempting to access the site.

"Tatkal booking during the holiday season is a nightmare. Servers crash right when bookings open. This is the worst website I've ever used. Why hasn't this been fixed despite repeated complaints?", a user wrote on X (formerly Twitter). attaching a screenshot of the website.

"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...", another user wrote with the screenshots of site.