Title - 72L online rly bookings fail in 2 months

Mumbai: The huge number of failed transactions clearly show the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is struggling to keep pace with the rise in demand for e-tickets.
    Approximately 35 lakh transactions in June 2012 and almost 37 lakh attempts in May 2012 failed to materialize due to the rush for tickets. To top it, there have been several cases where tickets have not been generated but the transaction amount has been debited from the cards of passengers. IRCTC upgrading site to raise booking capacity to 8L a day
    In face of criticism over e-ticketing glitches, the Indian Rail Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) says it has taken a number of steps to upgrade its IT infrastructure.
    Last month, K H Muniayyapa, minister of state for railways, had assured that several technological innovations are regularly undertaken to upgrade its online
services. These include increasing server bandwidth to augment its e-ticketing systems.
    Both the IRCTC and the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) are working jointly to double the website’s capacity from the current four lakh bookings a day to eight lakh a day.
    Passengers can expect quicker booking of e-tickets as well, as CRIS has undertaken massive expansion of servers. During a visit to the city, Vinay Mittal, chairman, railway board, had assured that this upgrade should be completed within a year. “The traffic has increased tremendously as nearly 50% of rail tickets are now booked online, leading to congestion in the existing system.”
    In recent past, a number of steps have been taken to upgrade the website’s capacity, including installation of high capacity database servers, and increasing the internet bandwidth from 344Mbps to 450Mbps.
    IRCTC has also deactivated thousands of multiple user IDs and individual user IDs of agents, who would jam the systems, causing servers to hang during peak hours.
    An IRTC official said, “The problem of failed transactions is also because of system issues of banks with whom we have tied up. Ideally, a transaction should get completed within two minutes but on some payment gateways, the time taken is more than this, resulting in failed transactions.”
    The corporation, on its part, said it is working on a payment system that will reduce transaction failures. It is also trying to lessen the burden on its website by roping in other travel portals for faster bookings.
    Change in Tatkal booking timings, too, has helped decongest traffic during peak hours. The opening timings of booking advance reservation period (ARP) and Tatkal tickets have been segregated to 8am and 10am, respectively. Agents have been barred from booking ARP or Tatkal tickets during the initial two hours after booking starts.
    As a result, the official said, “The number of online bookings has increased from 3.5 lakh per day to more than 4.5 lakh, which shows that the measures taken by IRCTC have yielded results.”
    The vigil maintained by the anti-fraud IT and vigilance team on bookings has also eased the situation after suspicious bookings were cancelled or investigated at their behest.