Commuters hit as IRCTC website, app remain down for hours

Lakhs of commuters were affected after digital booking of the Indian Railways took a severe hit on Tuesday. The IRCTC server crashed for around 10 and a half hours that crippled booking of local and long-distance trains

Mumbai: Lakhs of commuters were affected after digital booking of the Indian Railways took a severe hit on Tuesday. The IRCTC server crashed for around 10 and a half hours that crippled booking of local and long-distance trains.

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IRCTC officials, however, remained mum over the issue and simply stated that due to technical reasons the ticketing service was not available.

The UTS mobile app and nearly 1,200 ATVMs used to book suburban train tickets in Mumbai division were also affected, forcing commuters to make serpentine queues to get tickets.

According to railway officials, the IRCTC server crashed at 2.56am.

The Central and Western railways put together have 1,199 ATVMs which were not functioning properly. Of them, 353 ATVMs are in WR and 846 in CR. The people complained that even after selecting the stations and proceeding to make payments, the payment gateway did not complete the transaction.

ATVMs comprise 15-20% of total ticket sales in the suburban system. According to rail officials, the smart cards were working, but payment through QR code was unavailable. Likewise, mobile ticketing, which is around 8-10% of the total booking, the UTS app too was not of much help. The payment gateway was accepting only the R-wallet. The UTS app displayed a message saying, ‘Payment other than R-Wallet has been disabled’.

A senior railway official said, “There was an external issue with the network. There was no problem with the internal server level. We checked various aspects of the system but did not find any malicious bugs or activity. We are still trying to ascertain the root cause for the failure and have sought help from the Ministry of Telecommunication.”

The rail officials claimed that from 12 midnight till 4.30pm on Tuesday, a total of 14.19 lakh people booked tickets using other ticket booking apps. Usually, about 12 lakh train tickets are booked online. According to a senior official close to the matter, the disruption was a result of an issue in authentication of transactions between banks and IRCTC. The issue was restored by around 1.28pm, however, IRCTC’s mobile application was restored only by 2pm.

Meanwhile, to avoid inconvenience to passengers, additional passenger reservation system (PRS) ticket windows were made available at various railway stations, and even helpline numbers and help desks were set up. Rail officials also said users whose money got deducted, but tickets were not booked, will get a refund in a few days.