IRCTC e-ticketing services down for 'maintenance', users vent frustration on social media

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) e-ticketing website experienced a downtime on Monday due to maintenance activity, the platform informed users through a notification. Users attempting to access the platform encountered a message stating that e-ticketing services would be unavailable for an hour due to maintenance work.

A message displayed on the website stated: “Due to maintenance activity, e-ticketing service will not be available for the next one hour. Please try later.”

The crash disrupted travel plans for thousands, with many users taking to social media and complaint platforms like Downdetector to report issues. The first incident reports emerged at 9:39 am, just minutes before the Tatkal booking window was set to open. Complaints peaked around 11:00 am, with over 1,500 users flagging the issue on Downdetector.

Frustrated users voiced their concerns on X, criticising IRCTC for frequent outages during high-traffic periods.

One user wrote, "The Most Pathetic Service from @IRCTCofficial, When Can we expect an Improvement? are we so incompetent that cant handle the traffic on the #irctc app and website. when talking about the development but the foundation is very weak which is your server which is down all d time."

Some alleged malpractice, with a user claiming, "There is a clear conspiracy and corruption in the whole #IRCTC #Tatkal. How all the tickets are getting booked by agents while common man can't even login into the app and on webpage from 9.58 to well around 10.05 even."

IRCTC has yet to provide details on the nature of the maintenance activity or confirm when the services will be fully restored.

Further updates are awaited.