IRCTC e-ticketing Site Down.

The IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) e-ticketing site is down for at least three previous days as passengers are not able to book the tickets.  Many passengers are venting out their anger on social media sites. CRIS (Center For Railways Information System) the information technology arm of the Ministry of Railways has developed the site with IRCTC and is maintained by BroadVision.

E-ticketing contributes to more than 12 % of IRCTC earnings the first being the catering. The IRCTC ticket booking website managed to collect more than 32 thousand crore rupees during 2018-19, more than 34 thousand crores during 2019-20 and more than14 a thousand crores during 2020-21, as ticket fares.

According to the statement of Piyush Goel in Lok Sabha in the year 2021, about 47% of the overall e-tickets are booked through IRCTC rail connect Mobile app which was launched in January 2017. The Minister apprised Lok Sabha that, the e-ticketing process in Railways is an evolving process and Courtesy to NGeT (Next Generation Ticketing), the server capacity has grown from 2,000 tickets per minute in 2014 to 20,000 tickets per minute during 2018-19.  The IRCTC website currently has the capacity to book 25,000 tickets per minute, the minister added.

However, the e-ticketing system of IRCTC also grapples with the business of illegal e-ticketing. According to a statement made by Shri Piyush Goel in 2021 in Lok Sabha, a total of 3, 256 cases were registered for touting of e-tickets in 2019 across zones. This number increased to 8,351 in 2020 the highest of them, with 744 coming from the Western Zone. To curb the e-ticketing malpractices, Railways has already placed a range of remedial measures in place.

The IRCTC is run under the Ministry of Indian Railways and was incorporated on 27^th September 1999. The extension of IRCTC was mainly made to upgrade, professionalize and manage the catering and hospitality services at stations on trains and other locations to promote domestic and international tourism, the IRCTC website says.