Tirumala: Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy was on a whirlwind trip to Tirupati on Thursday. Reddy, who arrived in the temple town in the morning, attended the wedding of the daughter of Srikant Reddy, a Congress leader of Piler constituency in Tirupati.
After the wedding, he headed straight to Tirumala to take the blessings of Lord Venkateswara. On his arrival at the Tirumala temple, Reddy was accorded the ‘Isthikapal’ (temple honours) welcome by the authorities and temple priests of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams.
After the darshan of Lord Venkateswara inside the sanctum sanctorum, the temple priests rendered ‘Vedasirvachanam’ to the Chief Minister at the Ranganayakula mandapam.
TTD executive officer M.G. Gopal and JEO Sreenivasa Raju presented Srivari prasadam, the 2014 calendar and diary of the TTD to the Chief Minister.
As the Chief Minister came out of the temple complex, he was greeted with ‘Jai Samaikyandhra slogans by pilgrims waiting on either sides of the barricades, and Reddy acknowledged them.
Interestingly, the Tirumala stopover was not on the agenda of the Chief Minister’s whirlwind visit to Tirupati.
On a day when Deputy Chief Minister Damodara Raja Narasimha was summoned by the party bosses to Delhi for talks on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister was offering prayers at the Tirumala temple for divine intervention.
