Visakhapatnam: Sri Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy of Simhachalam Devasthanam is all set to take the once-a-year ‘Nijarupa’ avatar on ‘Vaisakha Suddha Tadiya’ on Wednesday.

Celebrated annually as ‘Chandanotsavam’ festival, it is on this occasion, the presiding deity of the Devasthanam will give darshan in the idol form sans layers of sandalwood paste.

Scores of devotees from different parts of the country will wait in long queues to witness the rarest darshan available on a single day in a year.

After special rituals performed for Lord Sri Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy and the first darshan facilitated to Simhachalam hereditary trustee P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and his family, the Nijarupa darshan will be made available to common devotees.

The district officials are making all arrangements to make the darshan available to common devotees on Wednesday from 3 am.

For the first time, technology has been incorporated to manage the crowd. In line with it, drones are being used by the city police for improved crowd management. As many as 2,000 police personnel have been deployed for the purpose on a shift basis. Along with traffic regularisation, the focus is also on queue line maintenance, monitoring of parking spaces, making towing service accessible to clear stuck vehicles, special slots for parking facilities, among other amenities.

Special RTC buses are plying for the purpose at various points across the district. In order to help devotees reach uphill, free bus services have also been provided by APSRTC.

Even as more than 1 lakh devotees are expected to witness the Nijarupa darshan, officials informed that the turnout is largely going to be based on the weather condition. With darshan tickets being inaccessible for the common devotees days before, it is expected to impact the footfalls at the Simhachalam. As the Rs.1,000 tickets were unavailable to the common devotees, there are allegations that they got sold out much early following the political pressure.

As the public representatives in North Andhra belong to the alliance, protocol darshan is expected to include an army of political leaders, their followers and supporters. Except free darshan and Rs 300 darshan tickets, the common devotees are left with no other choice but to opt between these two categories. As a result, the devotees are going to end up waiting in the long queue lines to witness the Nijarupa darshan.

Sharing arrangement details, Mayor Peela Srinivasa Rao informed that 1,350 sanitary workers have been deployed for sanitation maintenance and over 400 temporary toilets facilitated. He further added that 5,600 water cans are provided at 193 points. District collector MN Harendhira Prasad and City Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi examined the Chandanotsavam arrangements at Simhachalam.