IRCTC’s digital makeover: Simplified booking, enhanced security, performance

New Delhi: In a significant technological and administrative transformation to update India’s online railway ticket booking system, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation recently released a slew of far-reaching changes to improve user experience, weed out bot users, and guarantee equal access for real users.

These changes, launched in early 2025, have already started delivering remarkable results, officials claimed, citing the record-per-minute booking figure of 31,814 tickets on May 22, 2025, at 10:01 a.m.

With the continuing problem of automated software tools and bots being utilised by unauthorised persons to obtain tickets within peak booking periods, such as Tatkal, the IRCTC has utilised cutting-edge technological solutions. These include the adoption of a top Content Delivery Network (CDN) and an anti-BOT application with advanced features enriched through artificial intelligence. These technologies are combined to make content load faster for users while identifying and blocking malicious automated traffic.

Consequently, more than 50 per cent of bot traffic is successfully mitigated, and 87 per cent of static content is delivered effectively over the CDN network, significantly enhancing system responsiveness overall.

The most palpable effect of these measures has been the severe increase in booking performance metrics overall. Besides the one-minute booking record, IRCTC also clocked its best-ever single-day book on March 6, with more than 16.17 lakh tickets booked. Day-wise average user logins have risen from 69.08 lakh in FY 2023-24 to 82.57 lakh in FY 2024-25, a rise of almost 20 per cent. A daily average booking has also increased by nearly 12 per cent.

To further make access easier for real passengers, IRCTC has introduced new registration guidelines: Aadhaar-verified users are not restricted at all, and non-Aadhaar users are allowed to book opening ARP, Tatkal, or Premium Tatkal tickets only after three days of registration. This step seeks to eliminate proxy or bot-based accounts.

Further, IRCTC recently suspended about 3.5 crore questionable user IDs in FY 2024-25 itself and filed 131 cybercrime complaints to clamp down on online fraud. A number of administrative checks have also been implemented to support these reforms. These are session limits, query limits, and time-based booking restrictions on agents. Also, registration and profile updates are forbidden during peak times, foreign IPs are blocked, and users are required to log out and log in again to book successive appointments—protocols specifically intended to disrupt the flow of automated bots and scripts.

IRCTC’s initiatives have not escaped the notice of the perpetrators who want to take advantage of the system. In an eye-opening observation, the corporation pointed out that bot creators are actually disseminating false information through social media platforms and closed groups, particularly on Telegram, to provoke users against these new initiatives. Screenshots of these staged campaigns reveal attempts to clog grievance redressal channels with a view to breaching the security infrastructure.

In furtherance of its long-term goal, IRCTC made a policy request for further fortification of system with a suggestion that only Aadhaar or PAN-validated users should be permitted to book Tatkal tickets for the initial 10 minutes.