Over 20 lakh persons booked railway tickets on September 7 – the highest-ever load that the site has handled on a single day this year. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: G.R.N. Somashekar
In a crackdown against touts and booking agents who misuse the railway ticketing infrastructure, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has deactivated 3.04 crore user IDs, the company said on Friday (September 11, 2026).
Apart from this, the railway PSU has suspended 6.33 crore IDs citing suspicious activity. These account holders cannot book tickets until they verify their authenticity.
Agents misuse the system by making bulk bookings after creating fake user IDs and later sell the tickets at inflated rates to desperate passengers.
Since October last year, the IRCTC has been cracking down on the misuse of the railway ticketing platform by touts. It has blocked 16,041 suspicious email domains and registered 592 complaints on the Cyber Crime Portal covering 4.21 lakh suspicious PNR (passenger name record) numbers, it said.
At present, only 8.43% to 14.14% of the day’s bookings are completed during the first hour from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., and over 85% of bookings are completed later in the day.
The first 15 minutes from 8 a.m. record the highest booking volume, reflecting peak concurrent demand. “All categories of authorised ticketing agents are prohibited from booking Advanced Reservation Period (ARP) tickets during the first 10 minutes of the booking window, i.e., 8 a.m. to 8.10 a.m.,” the company stated. “Only Aadhaar-authenticated users are permitted to book tickets during the opening ARP window from October 12, 2025.”
The IRCTC has engaged a leading technology player for implementing anti-BOT and content delivery network (CDN) capabilities. “The anti-BOT technology has resulted in mitigation of malicious BOT traffic to the extent of 55% to 65% in the recent months. The implementation of CDN for providing static content has reduced load on the New Generation Ticketing (NGeT) system, thus enhancing the experience for genuine and verified users,” the company stated.
A network security team is actively taking down fake websites and mobile apps impersonating IRCTC.
Highest booking on Sept. 7
Over 20 lakh persons booked railway tickets on September 7 – the highest-ever load that the site has handled on a single day this year – owing to the festive season booking [for Deepavali and other festivals], the company stated on Friday.
This year’s record of 20,06,353 tickets on September 7 has surpassed that of the previous year. “During the festive season last year, 18,40,203 tickets were booked on August 19, 2025,” the company said.
At present, about 89% of total reserved tickets are being booked through online mode, the company said.
Systems upgraded
The IRCTC has introduced booking system upgrades, including introduction of new UI beta version, from July 15. “Due to this, the system continues to sustain high load of booking,” the company said, adding that 19,50,699 tickets were booked on September 8.
NGeT handles 1.33 crore to 1.74 crore logins and processes 17 lakh to 20 lakh bookings on each ARP opening day, demonstrating enhanced system capacity under heavy demand. The IRCTC portal is able to handle heavy booking volumes because the PSU made an assessment of its server capacity and enhanced it.
In addition to hardware augmentation, substantial capacity enhancement has also been achieved through software optimisation and architectural improvements, it added. Also, IRCTC has launched a new user interface beta version from July 15, featuring design trends such as Glassmorphism, offering a visually appealing journey from login to ticket confirmation.
The revamped interface consolidates availability information for multiple travel classes — such as Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, and AC 2 Tier — onto a single screen. This feature enables passengers to compare options and reduces navigation effort, the company said.
Published – September 11, 2026 10:46 pm IST
