IRCTC deactivates more than three million user IDs, suspends 6.33 million IDs

More than 20,000 people booked railway tickets on September 7 – the highest ever load the venue has handled in a single day this year. Representative file image. | Photo credit: GRN Somashekar

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has deactivated 3.04 million user IDs as part of a crackdown on hawkers and booking agents abusing railway infrastructure to sell tickets, the company said on Friday (11 Sep 2026).

Besides, the railway PSU has suspended 6.33 lakh IDs citing suspicious activity. These account holders cannot book tickets until they verify their authenticity.

Agents abuse the system by making bulk bookings after creating fake user IDs and later selling tickets at inflated prices to desperate passengers.

Since October last year, the IRCTC has been cracking down on abuse of railway platforms by ticket sellers. It blocked 16,041 suspicious email domains and registered 592 complaints on the cybercrime portal covering 4.21,000 suspicious PNR (Passenger Name Record) numbers.

Currently, only 8.43% to 14.14% of daily bookings are completed within the first hour of 8:00am to 9:00am, and over 85% of bookings are completed later in the day.

The first 15 minutes from 8am sees the highest volume of bookings, reflecting peak concurrent demand. “All categories of authorized ticket sellers are prohibited from booking advance reservation period (ARP) tickets during the first 10 minutes of the booking window i.e. from 8:00 am to 8:10 am,” the company said. “Only Aadhaar users can book tickets during the ARP opening window from October 12, 2025.”

IRCTC has engaged a leading technology player to implement anti-BOT and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) features. “The anti-BOT technology has resulted in 55% to 65% mitigation of malicious BOT traffic in recent months. Implementing a CDN to deliver static content has reduced the load on the New Generation Ticketing (NGeT) system, improving the experience for real and authenticated users,” the company said.

The network security team is actively removing fake websites and mobile apps impersonating IRCTC.

Highest booking on September 7th

More than 20 million people booked rail tickets on September 7 — the highest ever load the site has handled in a single day this year — to book for the festive season (for Deepavali and other festivals), the company said on Friday.

This year’s record of 20,06,353 tickets on September 7 surpassed the previous year’s record. “During the festive season last year, 18,40,203 tickets were booked on August 19, 2025,” the company said.

At present, about 89% of the total tickets booked are booked through the online mode, the company said.

Systems upgraded

IRCTC has rolled out upgrades to the booking system, including the introduction of a new beta version of the user interface, from July 15. “Due to this, the system continues to maintain a high booking load,” the company said, adding that 19,50,699 tickets were booked on September 8.

NGeT processes 1.33 million to 1.74 million check-ins and handles 17 to 20 million bookings on each ARP opening day, demonstrating the increased capacity of the system during high demand. The IRCTC portal is able to handle high volumes of bookings as the PSU has done an assessment of its server capacity and increased it.

In addition to the hardware expansion, a substantial increase in capacity has also been achieved through software optimization and architectural improvements, he added. IRCTC has also launched a new user interface beta from July 15 that features design trends like Glassmorphism, which offers a visually appealing journey from check-in to ticket confirmation.

The redesigned interface consolidates availability information for multiple travel classes – such as Sleeper, AC 3 Tier and AC 2 Tier – onto a single screen. The feature allows travelers to compare options and reduces navigational effort, the company said.

Published – 11 Sep 2026 22:46 IST