DDA may ‘ webcast’ new housing scheme draw

Gearing up for the draw, the DDA has planned to dedicate a server to deal with the anticipated ‘ rush of online traffic’

The much- awaited draw of the lots for the flagship “DDA Housing Scheme 2014” in November, could be seen online by people, as the housing authority is carrying out a feasibility study to webcast the entire event, a top official said on Sunday.

The tentative date for draw of the lots for the new scheme, which offers over 25,000 flats across categories ranging from ` 7 lakh to ` 1.2 crore, is November 5. The scheme closed on October 15 and has received 8.5 lakh applications.

“We have already initiated the feasibility study to see if we can webcast the entire procedure. We are already in talk with vendors in this regard,” director ( systems) of DDA, V. S. Tomar said.

He said the decision to this effect was taken by the DDA’s vice- chairman, in a recent meeting, after getting suggestions from people living in India and abroad, on the scheme.

“We had suggestions from Indians living abroad, if the draw process could be webcast online. So far, we have received about 600 suggestions online and people have also approached us in person, with suggestions to this nature,” Mr Tomar said.

He said, if the proposal turns out be “cost- effective”, DDA would be able to implement it.

“The current technological constraint is that as long as 5,000 viewers come online for the webcast, the system works, but there is a chance of it crashing, if it goes beyond. So, we need to look into that aspect also,” he said.

“We could introduce a registration process where in we could cap the number of online users, to avoid any crashing, but right now, we are waiting for the feasibility report,” he said.

Gearing up for the draw, the DDA has planned to dedicate a server to deal with the anticipated “rush of online traffic”.

“The website had crashed during the launch and the draw time of the last scheme so we are taking all precautionary measures this time,” Mr Tomar added.

“We will be setting up a dedicated served around the last week of this month to avert chances of crashing the website due to heavy traffic,” he said.

“The draw takes about 6090 minutes, and after 30 minutes or so we would be able to come up with the list of successful applicants on our official website,” Mr Tomar said.