IRCTC down: Website and app crash ahead of Diwali, thousands unable to book tickets

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website and mobile application, widely used for online railway ticket bookings, suffered a major outage on Friday, disrupting services for thousands of passengers just days before Diwali.

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, more than 6,000 users reported problems accessing the service or completing bookings. Many travellers took to social media to complain that the website was either not loading or crashing midway through the ticketing process.

As of Friday afternoon, the IRCTC website remained inaccessible, displaying error messages for most users attempting to log in or search for trains. The mobile app was also reported to be unresponsive for several users.

As per the Downdetector, 40 per cent of users report issues with the website, 37 per cent with the app, and 14 per cent with ticketing. The outage peaked after 10:00 AM IST this morning. The outage tracking website highlighted Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Nagpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and other majorly affected cities due to the IRCTC Outage.

(This is a developing story; check for more updates)