TTD website crashes on Tuesday; people unable to book tickets for hours

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) website crashed on Tuesday, after bearing heavy traffic. The TTD website is a platform for devotees who wish to avoid the queue and book darshan tickets at the Lord Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati and the various other temples in the state. The incident happened when a large number of devotees logged in to book special entry darshan tickets priced at Rs 300 on Tuesday. These tickets were the September month’s online quota and devotees were in a rush to avail them, which led to a large number of people logging in at the same time. 

At Least 1.10 lakh users registered onto the TTD website ( www.tirumala.org and www.tirupatibalaji.ap.gov.in) as soon as the quota was released on Tuesday. The website could not withstand such a large online queue and remained frozen for hours. The TTD server, on any normal day, has a capacity of handling 30,000 to 40,000 users and the number of users on Tuesday comfortably surpassed this. 

On this, a number of devotees expressed their displeasure about the TTD website crashing as they raced against time to book their tickets. The servers were restored after a while and when users tried booking their tickets again, they were disappointed to see the “quota is full” message appear on the screen.

This is the fourth such instance of the website crashing in four months. Apparently, the website is able to bear the usual number of users but when the quota is released, an enormous number of people log in to buy tickets. When this issue had surfaced previously, the then TTD Executive Officer Dr. KS Jawahar Reddy IAS had directed the in-house IT department and TCS support team to look into the matter. They were directed to take the necessary steps in order to strengthen the online infrastructure so that the website can handle large growth numbers.