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Indian Railways festival ticket demand

Updated 1 time since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

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2026-09-09 02:47 UTC → 2026-09-12 04:05 UTC · added removed

Indian Railways has initiated the Advance Reservation Period for travel during the upcoming Diwali and Chhath Puja festivals. Under the 60-day booking rule, passengers began attempting to secure tickets for early November travel. High demand has led to rapid sell-outs on major routes, including Delhi-Patna, Mumbai-Gorakhpur, and several routes from Chennai toward southern districts. In many instances, sleeper and AC coaches were fully booked within minutes of the booking opening, resulting in extensive waiting lists. The surge in simultaneous users caused the IRCTC website and mobile app to experience slowdowns. To manage the demand, the railway has announced special festival services, such as the Mumbai Central–Katihar special, while passengers have requested additional special trains to accommodate travel to southern and Kongu regions. Recent data shows IRCTC reached a record-breaking single-day milestone, processing 2,006,353 ticket bookings during the advance reservation period. This surge follows a policy change that shortened the advance reservation window from 120 days to 60 days. To accommodate the high volume, East Central Railway has announced several pairs of special festival trains running between October and November. These services will connect destinations including Patna, Muzaffarpur, Jogbani, Sitamarhi, Chandigarh, Firozpur Cantt, Anand Vihar, Delhi, Laukha Bazar, and Rishikesh. Online bookings now account for 89 percent of all train ticket transactions. Officials noted that the Next Generation e-Ticketing (NGeT) system has demonstrated the capacity to handle these volumes, despite peak concurrent demand occurring within the first 15 minutes of the daily booking window.

Versions

  1. 2026-09-12 04:05 UTC Indian Railways festival ticket demand
  2. 2026-09-09 02:47 UTC Indian Railways festival ticket demand

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