DDA website restored; over 18 lakh hits in two days

Delhi Development Authority today restored its online service after a massive response to its mega housing scheme crashed the official website.
Top DDA officials said the website received a whopping 18.25 lakh hits since the launch of the housing scheme yesterday under which over 25,000 flats have been offered.
They said all the online services have been restored and the server was being upgraded to handle the "exponentially increased" user traffic.
The website -- dda.Org.In -- had crashed yesterday after receiving over five lakh hits within a few hours of the scheme's launch.
"We received a total of 11 lakh hits on the day of the launch. Our website usually gets between 2.5 to 3 thousand online users otherwise. Overall in the first two days, we received 18.25 lakh hits," V S Tomar, Director of Systems at DDA, told PTI.

Tomar said every effort is being made to improve the online services.

"Our homepage has a new link 'DDA Housing Scheme 2014' lower down the website, which directs the online users to our 13 empanelled banks and URLs," said Tomar.
Thirteen banks have been empanelled to offer financial assistance to applicants. However, the bank URLs are yet to be activated.
"Online users who wish to download forms, or apply online or wish to buy forms can get details about the respective banks and their branches from our website. Since, our server cannot handle the extremely heavy online traffic, we are redirecting the services to banks," Tomar said.

The official said that DDA has already initiated the process of upgrading its server to handle larger traffic.
"Our server bandwidth capacity is 45 mbps and the traffic we were receiving needed 65 mbps. We have already initiated the process of upgrading our server to handle 100 mbps requirements, and by tomorrow afternoon, we should be able to achieve it. If we make the links active now, the site would again crash," he said.
DDA launched it largest-ever scheme -- the 'DDA Housing Scheme 2014' offering 25,034 flats, out of which 22,627 are one-bed room apartments, a major draw for people this year.

The new scheme which will be open till October 9, offers flats ranging from Rs 7 lakh to Rs 1.2 crore across various categories, viz - EWS, LIG, MIG, HIG, Janta flats and one-room apartments.
"The scheme is open to applicants from September 1 and the last date to receive the application is October 9. The draw of lots would preferably be taken out within 20 days of the close of the scheme," DDA Vice-Chairman Balvinder Kumar said.