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In a major crackdown on ticketing fraud, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has deactivated over 2.5 crore user IDs suspected of being part of a massive network exploiting its booking system.
According to a report by The Times of India, this move comes after an internal investigation revealed around 2.9 lakh suspicious PNRs, all generated within just five minutes of booking windows opening, especially for highly demanded general and Tatkal tickets.
Viral Post Puts Spotlight on Longstanding Grievances
This action comes close after a recent viral social media post by a Bihar-based lawyer, Sonu Nigam, who detailed his failed attempt to book a Tatkal ticket on the Garib Rath Express.
In his post on X, he shared his experience of app crashes, delay in server response, and instant waitlisting, which resonated with thousands of users online who voiced similar frustrations.
Many pointed to a suspected pattern where travel agents, allegedly using ‘special software,’ consistently managed to secure confirmed tickets while ordinary users were left stranded within seconds.
This public outcry brought renewed scrutiny to the Tatkal system, which was originally meant to help passengers in urgent need. Over time, it has become a bottleneck where technology appears to favour agents and middlemen over regular users, fuelling perceptions of bias and digital manipulation.
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Systemic Measures Underway to Restore Fair Access
Acting on similar allegations, the IRCTC launched an aggressive clean-up drive between January and May 2025, said reports.
Apart from deleting suspicious accounts, it placed 20 lakh more under review and flagged over 6,800 disposable email domains often used to create fake accounts for mass ticket purchases. The agency also filed 134 complaints with the National Cyber Crime portal.
To further secure the booking environment, IRCTC has introduced advanced anti-BOT technologies and collaborated with content delivery networks that help distinguish human users from automated scripts, with these systemic upgrades leading to record-breaking traffic handling, with 31,814 tickets booked in a single minute on May 22, 2025.
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Problems Persist for Common Passengers
Despite these efforts, many users remain sceptical. Social media continues to echo concerns that the core issues have not been resolved. While IRCTC reports an improved attempt-to-booking ratio, from 43.1% in October 2024 to 62.2% in May 2025, the lack of transparency and continued success of some third-party B2C platforms in securing and reselling tickets at a premium raise troubling questions.
