IRCTC Website Goes Down Amid Diwali Rush, Users Flag Login Issues

The website of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) experienced a significant outage on Friday morning, resulting in severe disruptions to train reservations during the festival rush. According to Downdetector, the internet outage watchdog, the issues on the website peaked at around 11:05 am, recording over 5,400 outage reports on the platform. While most glitches appear to have emerged on the website, users have reported login issues with the mobile app on both Android and iOS.

Downdetector shows that 49 per cent of the issues have occurred on the website, while 37 per cent of reports cite downtime in the app. Apart from login, payment, and server issues, the IRCTC website is currently preventing users from booking tickets or updating their passenger lists. While outages in the official website of Indian Railways are not uncommon, the current incident could easily be among the biggest, owing to a massive rush of travellers ahead of the Diwali season.

“Indian Railways has truly evolved — earlier Tatkal tickets failed due to ”server issues" or “fake users.” Now, you can't even log in. And if by some miracle you reach the payment page, congratulations — you've unlocked Mission Impossible: Tatkal Edition," said a user on X (formerly Twitter). Another user vented out the frustration and asked for the Railway Ministry's help, saying, “I tried booking a ticket through the IRCTC App, but it was not working properly. My season ticket had already expired, and due to the app issue, I couldn’t renew or book a new ticket in time. @RailMinIndia Because of this problem, I was unable to travel.”

IRCTC has yet to acknowledge the outage and clarify what caused it during the hours dedicated to booking Tatkal tickets.