New Delhi:
As the world prepares to bid farewell to 2024 and welcome the new year, thousands of travelers in India were left stranded due to a critical outage on the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website and mobile app. This incident, which occurred on December 31, marks the third time this month that the platform has faced such disruptions, exacerbating the frustration among passengers.
The outage was reported at around 10 am, a peak time for booking Tatkal (emergency) tickets. Users attempting to access the website and app were met with a message indicating that the site was under maintenance and that booking services would be unavailable for the next hour. This timing could not have been more inconvenient, given that New Year’s Eve is a period of high travel demand.
The recurring technical glitches have sparked widespread criticism. On social media, users expressed their discontent, questioning the timing and efficiency of the maintenance activities. One user lamented, “Who in this world keeps the site under maintenance during working hours?” Another user highlighted the recurring nature of the issue, stating, “Whenever I try to book a train ticket, I face some problems in the IRCTC app. The railways should take some innovative steps for ticket booking.”
This is not an isolated incident; the IRCTC website and app have been down twice before this month. On December 26, the platform was inaccessible for 1.5 hours, and on December 9, it was down for an hour, both times due to “maintenance activity.” These repeated outages have underscored the need for a more robust and reliable system, especially during critical periods like Tatkal ticket bookings.
The silence from the Railways on these recurring issues has only added to the public’s frustration. Passengers are urging the authorities to take swift and decisive action to prevent such outages in the future, ensuring that the ticket booking process remains smooth and uninterrupted.
