New Delhi. As soon as the festive season arrives, travelers start preparing for their journey. But this time IRCTC website and app created a lot of trouble for the passengers. On Saturday, October 25, IRCTC servers suddenly went down, leaving millions of people across the country unable to book tickets online. Travelers received this annoying message when making a reservation: "This site is currently inaccessible, please try again later."

Scroll to load tweet…

The incident is the second major disruption in recent weeks. Even just before Diwali, the IRCTC server was down, due to which people faced problems in ticket booking. Frequent server down times during such a busy festival season increased stress and frustration among passengers.

Did IRCTC server down make festival booking difficult?

According to social media reports, the disruption began around 10 am, which coincided with the opening of the AC and tatkal booking windows. Passengers trying to book tickets at the last minute received a "server unavailable" error. Many people gave up and some shared screenshots of their failed bookings on X (formerly Twitter). Platforms like Downdetector also confirmed that the IRCTC portal was indeed down.

Scroll to load tweet…

IRCTC has not yet given any official statement on the issue as to why the interruption occurred and when the services will resume. Past experiences show that server disruptions last for a few hours, but such incidents are becoming a frequent occurrence during festival times, causing problems for passengers.

Scroll to load tweet…

What steps did Railways take for the convenience of passengers?

Despite difficulties in online booking, North Eastern Railway took proactive measures to manage the increasing number of passengers. Railways has started a total of 186 special trains to meet the demand. Apart from this, additional ticket counters and digital display boards have been installed at Gorakhpur and other major stations to maintain the convenience of passengers. But the question is, will IRCTC be able to make festive travel easier due to frequent downing of servers? This challenge has become bigger due to the increasing number of passengers and continuous interruption in online booking.