Tirumala witnesses heavy rush as school holidays end

Tirumala: The abode of Lord Venkateswara witnessed heavy rush of pilgrims with the summer holidays coming to an end on Sunday. The two queue complexes were full, resulting in the queue line extending beyond the complexes.

Senior officials including TTD Executive Officer Dr D Sambasiva Rao and joint executive officer K Srinivasa Raju personally inspected the pilgrim movement in the queue lines and also the facilities provided to the devotees waiting in the queue lines for darshan.

TTD EO first visited the luggage counters at PAC IV and at GNC toll gate and instructed the vigilance officials to think of a better mechanism for safeguarding the luggage of pilgrims. "The pilgrims should not feel any difficulty in identifying and procuring their baggage.

Invent a better system to ensure the devotees not to wait more than five minutes to take back their luggage’’, he reiterated.

EO later visited various points including Narayanagiri area to oversee the pilgrim movement and Annaprasadam complex before reaching the shrine. He instructed the officials to ensure uninterrupted darshan by making all necessary arrangements.

Temple sources said that the waiting time for Sarva Darshan was over 10 hours, while pilgrims walking up the hills was 8 hours.

TTD sources said 96,799 pilgrims had darshan on Saturday while on Sunday from 3 am to 6 pm 75,139 pilgrims had a darshan. TTD netted a revenue of Rs 2.58 crore through Hundi collection on Sunday.