There was an unprecedented response to the online booking of paid darshan tickets the TTD released on Friday for the month of October.
The quota of about 2.4 lakh Special Entry Darshan (SED) tickets of ₹300 each for the month (8,000 tickets per day) were exhausted in a couple of hours of their release. A record number of about 5.5 lakh hits were registered on the TTD website.
The improvements made to the online booking of darshan tickets in the recent times proved rewarding with no major technical issues reported during the entire course of bookings.
Briefing the media here, Additional Executive Officer A.V. Dharma Reddy was in all praise for Reliance Jio, TCS and the TTDs IT team for overcoming the hurdles that normally hampered the bookings.
He thanked the Reliance Jio management for employing the cloud management technology in providing darshan tickets, besides extending the technical support.
Mr. Reddy also appealed to the devotees not to get carried away by the “malicious campaign by vested interests,” and said that the Reliance Jio management, besides lending its expertise, had borne all the costs without burdening the TTD.
He also clarified that due to paucity of time the darshan tickets were made available on the Jiomart sub-domain. They would be available on the TTDs domain – tirupatibalaji.ap.gov.in – from next time, he said.
Meanwhile, sources said that about 2/3rd tickets were booked by pilgrims using their mobile devices and 40% of the payments made through Unified Payments Interface (UPI). An interesting part was that it took about 30 seconds for completion of the entire booking process.
