In yet another bad press and news for the Indian Railways, The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Cooperation Limited (IRCTC) website irctc.co.in and mobile phone app were down on the morning of Friday, May 4 for about two hours. It was back and running around 12:45 pm after reportedly being down since 11 am.
The site displayed a downtime message which said, “DUE TO MAINTENANCE ACTIVITY E-TICKETING SERVICE IS NOT AVAILABLE. PLEASE TRY LATER. FOR CANCELLATION/FILE TDR, PLEASE CALL AT CUSTOMER CARE NO. 011-39340000,011-23340000 OR MAIL AT etickets@irctc.co.in.” Many on social media raised questions on whether the website could have been hacked, reported India.com.
What is bad luck ?
When you book tens of tatkal tickets every month for others and the day you try to book one for yourself #irctc goes #down pic.twitter.com/KXGuIBpdvi
— Sarvesh Kashelikar (@sarvesh_ak) May 4, 2018
@IRCTC_Ltd
Hi Dear sir
Server error! I made two tickets and both of them will be cut but the money will not be conformed. How long will it all last? You can tell me. It is said by saying that the money of kiu is 2 or 4 day you refund it does not get any interest. why pic.twitter.com/0ZPB8vcXCI— shibu.kumar.pandey (@shibu_pandey) May 4, 2018
@IRCTCofficial why today server is very down. I missed my booking today. What’s the issue. ? @eCateringIRCTC @WesternRly @IRCTC_News #irctcsitedown. #tatkalticket
— Ashish Shah (@Rkkhantrader) May 4, 2018
Many people took to social media site Twitter to vent their anger on not being able to book tickets or tatkal tickets. They marked Railway Minister Piyush Goyal as well as Indian Railways in their tweets and asked as to why the website and app were not working. However, there was no word from the Ministry of Railways about the glitch and no prior announcement were made by the IRCTC.
People who tried logging in to the IRCTC app received a message saying, “Data cannot be retrieved, please try later.” Those who were waiting to book Tatkal tickets for tomorrow were not being able to do so as the site and app were down.