Second Crash in a Week: IRCTC Website Fails Amid Festive Rush

GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 25th Oct: In yet another major technical setback, the official ticket booking portal of Indian Railways, IRCTC, went down for the second time within a week, leaving thousands of passengers unable to book train tickets ahead of Diwali, one of the busiest travel periods in India.

Users attempting to access the website or the mobile app were greeted with an error message reading, “This site is currently unreachable. Please try after some time.” The outage began around 10:00 a.m., coinciding with the crucial Tatkal booking window for AC tickets, when demand typically peaks.

Social media was soon flooded with complaints, as frustrated passengers took to X (formerly Twitter) to report booking failures and share screenshots of the error page. Several users also flagged the issue on Downdetector, a platform that monitors website and app outages.

This marks the second IRCTC website crash in a week. Earlier, on October 17, users faced similar difficulties booking tickets due to a server malfunction. Although the system was restored after several hours, the recurrence of the glitch has sparked widespread anger among railway passengers.

Despite repeated assurances from the Railway Ministry about upgrading the IRCTC servers and improving digital infrastructure, technical issues continue to plague the portal—especially during festive and holiday seasons, when millions of travelers rely on it for ticket reservations.

So far, IRCTC has not issued any official statement on the latest disruption. The outage has caused significant inconvenience to passengers trying to secure tickets for Diwali travel, forcing many to resort to offline booking counters or private agents.

Experts say the recurring server crashes highlight the urgent need for a robust digital overhaul of the Indian Railways’ online infrastructure to handle massive traffic surges during peak periods.