Ticket booking: TTD laments criticism over taking Jio help

Tirumala: TTD chairman Y V Subba Reddy said that it is unfair to politicise even a laudable initiative on the part of TTD involving Jio, for smooth functioning of its website for a hassle-free booking of darshan tickets. To reduce the load on its website, TTD began using the services of the Jio sub-domain on Friday triggering widespread criticism on social media and also wild allegations against TTD for roping in Jio, largest IT network in India.

Against this backdrop, TTD chairman in a statement, maintained that he had already informed via media that to overcome the technical snags in online booking, TTD took up Jio company services as the firm came forward to offer technical as well infrastructure support worth nearly Rs 3 crore free of cost.

But, a section of the media and some vested interests on social media created ruckus and spread baseless allegations against TTD, creating unnecessary confusion among devotees, he lamented.

Following the complaints and feedback from pilgrims over the technical issues in online bookings faced in August and September this year, TTD IT team with the help of TCS explored all the possible technical solutions to overcome these snags coming in the way of devotees booking darshan tickets, he explained.

"When we approached Jio, Amazon, Abhibus, BookmyShow, M/s Jio came forward to offer free service. We were able to overcome the technical issues and all the tickets were booked in a smooth manner today (Friday) with the Cloud management support worth Rs 3 crore provided free of cost by Jio," he said adding that the pilgrims were redirected to Jiomart subdomain from tirupatibalaiji.ap.gov.in website as TTD sub-domain could not be created due to short-time and technical constraints.

From next month onwards, the domain name will be tirupaitbalaji.ap.gov.in only and the Jio domain will not surface while booking the tickets online, he explained.

Condemning the attempts by the 'vested interests' to politicise even the good deed of TTD and trying to malign the reputation of institutions like TTD, he appealed to the devotees not to be taken away by such baseless allegations.