Thousands of commuters in the national capital were stranded at several Metro stations during morning rush hours today as trains were delayed by at least an hour due to a technical problem.

Services on the over-crowded Line 3 that connects Dwarka sub-city with Noida City Centre and Anand Vihar were affected due to intermittent Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) server failure.

Trains were delayed by at least an hour during the morning rush hours as thousands of passengers kept waiting at various stations.

There was a near stampede-like situation at stations like Rajiv Chowk, Anand Vihar, Laxmi Nagar and Yamuna Bank as passengers pushed each other to board trains. These stations see the maximum footfall on the Line 3.

Trains started moving at a slow speed and some stopped at stations at around 10 AM when the problem cropped up.

Normalcy was restored by 11.30 AM, but minor delays continued till 4 PM.

"The Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) server failure resulted in frequent loss of train Identification numbers and bunching of trains on Line 3/4. Communication network technical snag affected train services from 10 AM to 4 PM," a DMRC spokesman said.

"Since the train numbers were lost due to some software malfunctioning, trains could not run. The trains were run on manual mode for some time and the numbers were resetted," a Metro official said.

Metro trains are given a number and every movement of them is monitored at the Operational Control Centre at the Metro headquarters here.

The spokesman said due to the malfunctioning, 10 trips had to be cancelled.

Huge queues could be seen at almost all stations on the line due to the delay in trains and once the trains started running, these were jam-packed.

Joseph, a journalist, who takes on a metro train from Anand Vihar to Central Secretariat, said he waited at the Anand Vihar station for over 15 minutes.

"This is for the first time that it is happening. I waited for more than 15 minutes and then a train came. The train moved very slowly and then it was stationed at the Nirman Vihar station for almost 10 minutes," he said.

Joseph said there was almost a "stampede-like situation" at the Anand Vihar metro station due to the delays.