Heavy demand drives competition for Rs 300 darshan tickets: TTD

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) has appealed to devotees not to fall for misleading social media claims about its online ticketing system. Clarifying that the platform is functioning efficiently, TTD said heavy demand during the release of Rs 300 Special Entry Darshan tickets often leads to slots being exhausted quickly, which should not be mistaken for technical failure.

Hyderabad: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) on Saturday appealed to devotees not to believe false information circulated on social media. It urged the devotees to understand that unsuccessful booking attempts during peak demand do not necessarily indicate a system failure. The release of Rs 300 Special Entry Darshan (SED) tickets led to intense competition, with lakhs of devotees attempting to book tickets simultaneously.

The TTD clarified that its online booking system was functioning efficiently. It was equipped with advanced technologies, including Google Cloud Platform, load balancing, auto-scaling, and distributed architecture. 

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During peak booking periods, around six lakh users may access the system at once. Considering an average of four tickets per user, the potential demand may reach 24 lakh tickets, against an available quota of approximately 2.69 lakh tickets. As a result, tickets for popular slots may be exhausted within a very short time, the TTD said in a press release.

The TTD explained that the Virtual Queue was used to regulate heavy traffic and protect the stability of the booking platform. Messages such as “Slot Unavailable” generally indicate that the quota has been filled and should not automatically be viewed as a technical failure, the press release from the management stressed.

The payment process also involves external payment gateways, banks and UPI networks. Hence, payment failures may occur at different stages and require separate technical verification. 

TTD also stated that continuous improvements are being made in booking capacity, database performance, security, anti-bot mechanisms and payment processing, it added.