Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) on Saturday gave a lengthy explanation on the doubts being raised by devotees on the online booking of special entry darshan tickets of Rs. 300 for Srivari and the campaign being carried out on social media. It clarified that the online booking system is technically very robust, but the main reason for the problem is the demand for tickets that is almost 9 times more than the available quota. It appealed to devotees not to consider the fact that tickets are sold out in a moment as a failure of the system.

The real situation is revealed with statistics

TTD explained what actually happens during the release of tickets along with statistics. It said that about 6 lakh users are coming to the website at a time for booking darshan tickets. It estimated that even if each user tries to get four tickets for their family members on an average, the total demand reaches about 24 lakh tickets. However, the quota released by TTD is only 2.69 lakh tickets. This means that on average 9 people are competing for each available ticket, and it is due to this intense competition that many people are not getting tickets. TTD has also clarified that

the virtual queue is not a security issue, but
a technical measure to ensure the stability of the entire system by preventing the servers from being overloaded by lakhs of requests at a time. It explained that the online system is being operated with modern technology like Google Cloud Platform, auto scaling, load balancing, and is being continuously monitored through a special technical war-room. Similarly, it reminded that payment failures are not entirely within the TTD's purview, but also depend on the performance of payment gateways, banks, and UPI networks. It has been requested that the 'slot unavailable' message due to unavailability of tickets should not be considered a technical error. It said that the booking process for other temples like Sri Padmavati Ammavaru and Sri Kalyana Venkateswara Swamy is going smoothly through the same system, citing low demand there. TTD assured that it is continuously improving the anti-bot mechanisms, security and payment processes, taking into account the feedback of the devotees. It urged everyone to understand that it is not possible to get tickets for everyone when there is huge demand. The Chief Public Relations Officer said in a statement that the false propaganda being spread on social media about TTD is not believed and we are committed to providing transparent and safe services to the devotees.