Many train passengers spent Tuesday, 10 November, staring at a loading screen on the railway ticket website. Several users complained on X that the Indian Railways booking portal was down. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has now said the platform stayed operational and that the problem was a surge in people trying to log in at the same time.

What IRCTC said

In a statement posted on its website, reported by The Indian Express and The New Indian Express (with PTI inputs), IRCTC dismissed reports of a shutdown. It said the online reservation system was working, but some users "may have encountered delayed login" because of an unusually high number of simultaneous login attempts on the website and the mobile apps.

The corporation blamed the rush on the festive season. Demand for tickets rises sharply around Diwali and Chhath Puja, when millions of passengers try to book at once. IRCTC described the glitches as temporary and said e-ticketing through all channels was back to normal by the time of its statement.

The numbers behind the rush

The Indian Express carried more figures from the statement. Nearly 89 per cent of reserved train tickets are now booked online. Between June 2025 and June 2026, passengers booked 65.08 crore reserved tickets through the Passenger Reservation System, and 57.90 crore of those were booked online.

IRCTC also pointed to the usual pressure points. Traffic peaks when advance reservations open at 8 am, and at Tatkal booking time, which is 10 am for AC classes and 11 am for non-AC classes. The corporation said heavy traffic at these hours has sometimes disrupted the website before.

What is being done

IRCTC says it is working on two upgrades:

  • An upgrade of its Next Generation e-Ticketing system, which launched in 2014. This covers servers, storage, networking and software, and is meant to raise booking capacity.
  • An "active-active" disaster recovery set-up, so services keep running even if one system fails.

The statement did not give a completion date for either upgrade, and it did not say how many users were affected on Tuesday. We have not independently confirmed the extent of the slowdown, which is based on user complaints on social media.

What this means if you are travelling for Chhath

Chhath Puja falls this weekend, so railway booking traffic is likely to stay heavy for several days. These are practical steps for passengers, not part of the IRCTC statement:

  • Log in a few minutes before booking opens and keep your passenger list and payment details ready.
  • Avoid repeatedly refreshing or opening several sessions, which can add to the load and may log you out.
  • If the app is slow, try the website, or the other way round, instead of retrying the same page again and again.
  • Before assuming a payment has failed, check your booking history and your bank message. Do not pay twice for the same ticket until you know the first attempt failed.
  • Use only the official IRCTC website and app or the railway counters, and avoid unknown links forwarded on messaging apps that promise confirmed tickets.

Why it matters

With nearly nine in ten reserved tickets now booked online, a few hours of login delay hits a very large number of people. During the festive peak, even a short slowdown can mean the difference between a confirmed berth and a waiting list. The railways have also been running extra festival trains, so if your preferred train is full it is worth checking the special services listed on official railway channels.

What next

Watch for any further railway statement on the system upgrade timeline. If you faced a failed payment or a ticket that did not issue, IRCTC's refund rules apply, and you should keep the transaction ID and your bank message handy while you raise a query through the official support channels.