Train ticket booking on the IRCTC website and mobile app became a frustrating exercise for several users on Thursday and Friday, with passengers taking to social media to complain about repeated errors, slow loading and booking failures. The complaints were particularly prominent around the morning booking rush. Several users said they had been trying to book tickets since 8 am but could not get past the booking process before seats disappeared. The issue was also reflected on Downdetector, with users reporting issues across the app, ticketing and website. However, IRCTC has not issues any official statement about the outage or whether the site is facing any technical issue or not.
Meanwhile, the difficulty in bookings may also be related to festival-season train bookings, particularly at this time of the year, when thousands of travellers try to book tickets for their festival journeys, potentially overwhelming IRCTC's servers. Indian Railways recorded its highest-ever daily passenger bookings, with 22.26 lakh tickets booked in a single day through the reservation system on September 7
