IRCTC: Ticketing Site Malfunctions Due To Technical Glitches; Sees Minor Fall In Shares

Several train ticket seekers faced massive problems in booking tickets on Monday (24 July) morning as the IRCTC website service was not available for a few hours, due to technical glitches.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the e-ticketing arm of Indian Railways, however, restored the service around 1.30pm.

IRCTC is said to have experienced a fall in shares and also loss in revenue due to less number of ticket bookings, including non-functioning of Tatkal booking facility.

The Tatkal booking, in which passengers book tickets on higher rate, was also unavailable due to the malfunctioning of the ticketing site.

Malfunctioning of the IRCTC ticketing site and mobile application started early morning on 25 July around 3.30am, and the problems persisted till 1.30pm afternoon causing inconvenience to thousands of ticket buyers.

"Due to technical reasons, the ticketing service is not available on IRCTC site and app. Technical team of CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems) is resolving the issue," the IRCTC tweeted.

It also advised passengers to book their tickets on platforms like Amazon, MakeMyTrip, among others.

Acknowledging the fall in shares during the crisis, IRCTC maintains that the loss is not major.

In order to make the situation worse for passengers, the unreserved ticketing system used for purchasing tickets, through the automatic ticket vending machines (ATVMs) also developed glitches.

The IRCTC website and mobile app cater to a massive population, and sell on an average 12 lakh tickets every day.

IRCTC in a statement said, "Bookings were going through platforms of 28 registered B2C agents. In addition, bookings were also happening through IRCTC Chatbot ‘Ask Disha’ and PRS counters. IRCTC has been notifying the passengers with regular updates through its Customer Care Centre and official twitter handle."

IRCTC maintains that the technical teams of IRCTC and CRIS worked along with key service providers to address the issues. The services were resumed at 1.30pm for website and 1.50pm for Mobile app.

During this period 72,967 tickets were already booked through IRCTC authorised partners. To facilitate passengers, about 200 additional passenger reservation system ticket counters were operated across various zonal railways.

It further said, "Today, up to 4.30pm (25 July, 2023) 8.61 lakh tickets are booked and by 00.00hrs, it is expected to book 12-13 lakh tickets online. So as such there is negligible effect on ticket booking due to some issue in IRCTC website and Mobile app. Other options were used. There was some issue in authentication of transaction between Bank and IRCTC in train ticket booking."