- Ashwini Vaishnaw says revamped IRCTC website will launch by July 15.
- Announcement made during interaction with MNIT Jaipur students.
- Student flagged recurring captcha and booking issues on IRCTC portal.
- New platform expected to address outages and Tatkal booking bottlenecks.
GG News Bureau
Jaipur, 12th June: Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has announced that a revamped and improved Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website will be launched by July 15, aiming to enhance the online ticket booking experience for millions of railway passengers.
The announcement came during an interaction with students at the Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), Jaipur, where a student raised concerns about recurring captcha-related difficulties on the IRCTC portal.
A video of the interaction has since gone viral on social media.
Responding to the student’s complaint, Vaishnaw immediately contacted a railway official and asked about the timeline for deploying the upgraded platform.
“All the students have demanded that there should be a new IRCTC website,” the minister said before asking whether the project could be completed within 30 days.
After receiving confirmation, Vaishnaw informed the students that the new website would be rolled out by July 15, drawing applause from the audience.
The IRCTC platform has frequently faced criticism from passengers over technical glitches, slow performance, captcha issues, OTP delays and system outages, particularly during peak booking hours and Tatkal ticket reservations.
With online reservations becoming the dominant mode of railway ticket booking, the performance of the portal has become increasingly important. According to railway officials, nearly 88 per cent of train ticket bookings are now made through online channels rather than physical reservation counters.
Indian Railways has also introduced several measures in recent years to improve transparency and curb misuse of the booking system. Since July 2025, Tatkal tickets can only be booked through Aadhaar-authenticated IRCTC accounts.
Official data shows that during the 2025 calendar year, IRCTC deactivated 3.04 crore user accounts and temporarily suspended 2.94 crore accounts with a revalidation option as part of efforts to streamline operations and prevent misuse.
The Railway Ministry has been pursuing broader digital modernisation initiatives across its services. Earlier this month, IRCTC announced the deployment of an artificial intelligence-based monitoring system to improve food quality and hygiene standards in railway catering operations.
More than 800 IRCTC kitchens have been connected to 2,394 AI-enabled cameras that are monitored from a central control room in New Delhi. The system is designed to identify nine different categories of hygiene-related anomalies during food preparation.
The upcoming website overhaul is expected to be another major step in improving passenger services and strengthening Indian Railways’ digital infrastructure.
