Despite the Indian Railways recently celebrating a record-breaking feat — 31,814 tickets booked in a single minute on May 22 — frustration over Tatkal ticket booking on the IRCTC platform has boiled over on social media. A wave of public anger has erupted, fueled by a viral post from Thyrocare founder Dr. A Velumani, who criticized the IRCTC’s Tatkal system as dysfunctional and unfair.
In a widely shared post on X (formerly Twitter) on June 3, Dr. Velumani described his exasperating experience attempting to book Tatkal tickets. “Tatkal booking on IRCTC has become a joke,” he wrote. “Seats show available, but the moment it turns 10 AM, the site hangs. By 10:03, all seats are gone — even in remote routes. And then at 10:04, the site suddenly becomes smooth again, as if nothing happened.”
His post, which quickly garnered over 70,000 views, struck a chord with thousands of users who have long accused IRCTC of failing to manage high-traffic booking windows effectively
Drawing on his own experience with server load issues at Thyrocare, Dr. Velumani suggested a potential solution: “If it is really server problem, from 8 AM to 6 PM allow 1/10 of trains booking every hour. It is server optimization.” He added that similar strategies helped his own company manage heavy traffic without expensive infrastructure upgrades.
However, the conversation quickly turned more serious, with several users suggesting the problem lies deeper than mere server issues. One user, Vidur (@Being_Pagan), alleged that an “Agent-Railways officials nexus” is at play.
“It’s not a server problem. If it was, it would have been there in tenures of @sureshpprabhu and @PiyushGoyal too. They deliberately do it so that everybody has to book a ticket through agents only,” Vidur posted.
In response to the mounting criticism, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) also issued a public statement on X . Replying to Dr. Velumani IRCTC posted: “The details of booking attempts made have not been shared in the post to enable us to do Root Cause Analysis (RCA). A number of systemic measures have already been taken in this respect, including legal action where appropriate. We shall continue to take steps to improve services for smoother browsing experience for users.”
