Tatkal ticket booking took a hit as Indian Railways' IRCTC website went down on Thursday due to maintenance activity. People were not able to book or cancel their tickets due to the issue. A downtime message displaying on the website page read: "Due to maintenance activity, e-ticketing service is not available. Please try later. For cancellation/file TDR, please call at customer care no. 0755-6610661, 0755-4090600, 0755-3934191 or mail at etickets@irctc.co.in."
People took to Twitter to voice their frustration. "IRCTC is down in the peak time of Tatkal! Lakhs of voters like me were to go to our home town to cast votes! This without any prior notice. Help! How are we supposed to travel now?" tweeted one user.
The official app of the IRTC was also down. "It is disappointing that people waiting for @IRCTCofficial tatkal services to open, could not book tickets today because the website was slow for maintenance. Most were wanting to go to vote in the last phase of #GeneralElections2019 @RailMinIndia don't we need better systems?" wrote another user.
@IRCTCofficial booking Tatkal tkt becoming frustrating.I hv tried to log in using 2 phone,1laptop,PhonePe,Paytm, irctc app,website too. It’s downtime/something went wrong/maintenance activity.Maintainance time during Tatkal booking?? Can You Pla Fix this for smooth tkt booking? pic.twitter.com/jzygyoJpY6
— Patil Mohan (@patilmohant) May 16, 2019