Twitter user points at ‘horrible Tatkal experience’, IRCTC responds

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Monday responded to a Twitter user's take on the platform's Tatkal service and the ordeal citizens face while booking tickets through it. In a Twitter thread, the man who goes by username Ravisutanjani, criticised the railways' ticketing partner along with other government portals like the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for “inefficient services that impact the masses.”

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“IRCTC has Horrible Tatkal Ticket Booking Experience, Portal Stops Working for 5 Minutes. When you Login, All Tickets are Gone. Highly Inefficient even at Fastest Internet. Flights seem Expensive, Trains are Heavily Waitlisted. Poor & Common People Suffers,” the user, who according to his LinkedIn profile has held managerial positions in Rapido, Zomato and Oyo, tweeted.

In the following tweet, he appreciated India's growth in building “world-class” payment systems but flagged some government websites for displaying no improvement in the past years. “India Built UPI, Some World Class Products in Payments. But we still have to deal with such Inefficiencies in services that impact Masses. IRCTC, EPFO, MCA Portal to name a few, Didn’t see any decent Improvement in the last few years,” he tweeted.

Lastly, he pointed out the shortcoming that agents book Tatkal tickets and sell them with a huge margin. He said, “I certainly understand the scale & challenges but there has to be some progress and amendments for public benefits. Genuine People can’t really get Tatkal Tickets Online while agents Book and sell for Heavy Premiums.”

In response to Sutanjani's tweet, which has now gone viral with over one million views at the time of writing this report, IRCTC admitted the heavy traffic its website faces when Tatkal bookings open, while pointing out that over 2 lakh tickets were booked in the first 20 minutes of the service today.

“Sir, there is a heavy rush and concurrency on the website at the opening time of Tatkal. However about 2 Lakh tatkal tickets were booked in the first 20 min of AC and Non AC tatkal,” read IRCTC's reply.