Kokan Railway's mishandled computerised online ticket booking system

 Kokan Railway's mishandled computerised online ticket booking system and doubts in general public's mind. 

The Kokan Railway is a busy route throughout the year and super busy during Ganpati / Holi festival and April / May Vacation period. The Railway admin has changed the advance ticket booking period from 120 days to 60 days giving more rush in a small period. 

I wanted to book Tutari Express ( 11003) for 16th May 2025 which starts at 00.05 from Dadar railway station in Mumbai. I logged into the Irctc.co.in website which is an authorised website for online booking.  

The online advance booking starts from 00.20 Am till 11.45 pm as per its website. I logged in on 00.20 Am on 17.03.2025 for booking tickets for 16.05.2025 and wanted to book for sleeper class. It was showing Available 229 seats as its status.

From 00.20 Am till 8.09 Am the message shown on the computer was "The booking for this class has not started, please try after some time". 

At 8.10 am it allowed me to book with available seats 19 only. So when were 210 seats booked when booking did not start?

At 8.10 am, I filled up online form for 3 passengers and went to menu for online payment. Paid Rs. 688.15/- i successfully paid the amount and the website logged me out automatically without showing my ticket. 

After logging into the irctc website again, and going to the last transaction menu, it showed me that the ticket is booked but with "RAC/WL" quota. That is waiting list.

How come 229 available tickets get manually booked in 3 minutes with people logging manually

I am an experienced programmer and I guess something is being tampered in the Online reservation system database. In programming there is called "cron jobs", where you can keep the data ready for your purpose and then feed the data to the system. The system will operate on the data and give results as desired. There is a possibility that somebody from bookingside is working on behalf of ticketing agents . 

A good programmer / System auditor can trace the Server as well as Database logs and pinpoint what is happening? Who is booking so many tickets without a system available to the general user? Whether revenue for such tickets is creditted to railway accounts? How can somebody tamper DB / System? Whether this is happening to Kokan Railway or to all busy railway routes? 

I request the vigilance department to look into the matter seriously, sumoto.

Madhav Bhole