For the second consecutive day, people found it difficult to book railway tickets on the official website of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC); the situation is expected to continue even on Saturday.
According to railway officials, with the pre-Diwali weekend approaching, there has been a sudden increase in traffic of people wanting to book tickets using the tatkal facility. The huge rush has made access to the website more difficult.
“Even on Friday, the problems on the booking portal continued due to the unexpected number of people making last minute reservations,” confirmed Pradeep Kundu, joint general manager, public relations, IRCTC.
Even if passengers manage to get a ticket, the long waitlist may play dampener. As per IRCTC rules, if a waitlisted e-ticket doesn’t get confirmed, it is automatically considered cancelled.
Meanwhile, IRCTC, like on Thursday, continued to remain among the top 10 trending topics on Twitter, with users flooding the micro-blogging site with angry messages about the ineffectiveness of the corporation’s booking portal.