The Indian Railways has deactivated 2.5 crore "bogus" user IDs and put around 20 lakh others under revalidation to curb unauthorised automated bookings by unscrupulous agents. This will significantly improve the access to genuine users on IRCTC website and app, the Ministry of Railways said.
The department deployed cutting-edge anti-BOT systems and integrated with a leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) service provider to make it possible. Besides enhancing transparency, the step will improve security and user experience as well.
Within the past five months (January to May), the Railways detected 2.9 lakh suspicious PNRs. This was done while analysing ticket bookings in the first five minutes after it started for both general and Tatkal tickets, The Times of India reported.
A Railways official shared that 134 complaints were registered with the national cybercrime portal and they have blocked more than 6,800 disposal email domains.
Fraudsters used unique email IDs for every contact or entity. These are usually for a limited number of times. This helps them charge extra money from the passengers.
Through the new system, the Railways has been able to mitigate all bot traffic effectively. They typically peaked during the first five minutes of Tatkal bookings.
During this period, the bot traffic accounted for up to 50 per cent of the overall login attempts.
Notably, the highest-ever per-minute booking of 31,814 tickets was witnessed on May 22, 2025.
The latest enhancement will further ensure better accessibility to genuine users and cut down 'bogus' attempts.
For fairness and efficiency, the Indian Railways has also come up with new user protocols. Under this, Aadhaar-verified users will be able to book train tickets on the IRCTC website and app without facing any delays; those not authenticated via Aadhaar can book Opening ARP, Tatkal or Premium Tatkal tickets can make bookings only after three days of registration.
These efforts have shown measurable improvements in recent times.
The average daily user logins was 69.08 lakh in financial year 2023–24 and increased to 82.57 lakh in FY 2024–25, witnessing a 19.53 per cent rise.
The average daily ticket bookings jumped by 11.85 per cent during the same period. At present, E-Ticketing accounts for 86.38 per cent of total reserved ticket bookings.
With CDN, 87 per cent of static content is being served for faster load times and reduced server load, the Railway Ministry said.
The AI algorithms have been able to detect and mitigate bot traffic actively.
As there is a "genuine shortage of confirmed tickets," efforts are being made to run more trains to increase capacity, sources told The Times Of India.
