10-km-long traffic jam at Srisailam ghat road amid heavy rush of devotees, tourists

ANANTAPUR: A traffic jam stretching over a 10km distance was reported en route to Srisailam Dam in the ghat section on Sunday due to heavy arrivals of devotees and tourists. They thronged the dam area where 10 crest gates were lifted and water discharged.

Srisailam dam sees a large turnout of people coming to enjoy the sight of discharge of water from the reservoir.

During holidays and weekends, devotees come from AP, Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra to Srisailam for darshan of Lord Mallikarjuna Swamy and pray at the Goddess Bramarambhika temples. They visit Srisailam dam on Sundays.

The traffic along the 10km distance was disrupted towards the dam and vehicles had to stop for a few hours to clear the rush.

“Traffic was hit from Srisailam temple road to the Hatakeswaram main entrance. Police rushed to the spot and monitored traffic in the ghat section up until the Srisailam dam spot,” police said.

“We got stuck in the traffic for more than two hours along the ghat road but enjoyed the scenes at Srisailam dam with all its gated lifted,” said Dhananjay from Hospet in Karnataka.

Srisailam EO Lavanna said necessary arrangements were made for the visit of the devotees. “We were expecting huge crowds during the month of Shravanam and also stopped sparsha darshanam due to the season of heavy rush.”

On Sunday evening, Srisailam dam recorded an inflow of 3.96 lakh cusecs and 3.95 lakh out flow downstream along with power generation from both left and right canals. The dam was maintained with 212.77tmc-ft and storage capacity at 884.51-ft level. All the 26 gates were lifted at the Nagarjuna Sagar dam,” the EO said.

The Tungabhadra dam was releasing 1.06 lakh cusecs into the river. The low-lying areas including historic structures and temples were submerged due to the flow of the river water. The historic Lord Sri Rama temple at Hampi was submerged as also all its statues, reports said.