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IRCTC website crashes within minutes; Howrah-New Delhi 3AC full to capacity

WION Web Team
New Delhi, Delhi, IndiaUpdated: May 12, 2020, 12:41 AM IST
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Photograph:(Twitter)

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Indian Railways resumed bookings at 4pm, but the website crashed. The bookings resumed at 6pm later on Monday.

Minutes after IRCTC website resumed bookings for passengers, the IRCTC website crashed due to heavy traffic.

Indian Railways has suspended all passenger trains since the lockdown started. This had led to a lot of people getting stranded in different cities, away from their hometowns.

In order to help people travel back to their hometowns, Indian Railways decided to partially start train services from May 12. The announcement was made on Sunday evening. 

The online ticket bookings were to begin at 4pm on Monday. However, within few minutes the website crashed and the people were unable to book tickets or even login to their accounts. 

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After some minutes, IRCTC announced that the booking portal will be accessible to all from 6pm.

The delay was not well received by the people, who took to Twitter to express their concern over this two-hour delay.

It took some time for IRCTC to be able to upload the train schedules and guidelines.

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As soon as the ticket portal became accessible to passengers, the Howrah-New Delhi route was fully booked for 3AC in less than 10 minutes. 

All other routes, too, saw a huge number of bookings within the first first hour itself.

While the passengers will be properly screened and face masks will be made compulsory, Indian Railway has issued guidelines for these bookings. It has been decided that no catering charges will be included in the fare as the provision for prepaid meal has been disabled. All passengers are being advised to carry their own food and water as only limited food provisions and packaged water bottles will be available.

Passengers have also been advised to carry their own linen and blankets. Long-distance passenger trains usually provide linens, blankets and curtains. However, to make sure that no transfer of infection takes place, the linens, blankets and curtains have been removed from the trains.

Passengers have also been told that downloading the Aarogya Setu app is compulsory.