Tirumala: Holiday crowds continued to pour into the Tirumala shrine on Saturday stretching the limited facilities available there. With a sea of humanity turning up at the shrine in the last two days, the waiting time for darshan of Lord Venkateswara was around 36 hours on Saturday.
Right from the Alipiri checkpoint to the laddu counters, long queues became the order of the day. With ten thousands continuing to arrive at Tirumala since Saturday morning all waiting compartments at the Vaikuntam Q complex were full. Thousands of pilgrims spilled over the outside queue lines which stretched beyond 3 km. Several devotees and their families were forced to find shelter on the footpaths as no accommodation was available at Tirumala. Though the temple administration limited the issue of VIP darshan tickets strictly on protocol basis, the heavy inflow of pilgrims threw the limited facilities at the hill shrine completely out of gear.
Due to the heavy rush, the temple administration advanced the issue of Rs 300 special entry darshan tickets as the quota was exhausted at 10 am itself. According to TTD officials the devotees had to wait for 36 hours for darshan as per the sarva darshan scheme and 20 hours under the footpath darshan. For the Rs 300 special entrance darshan devotees had to wait for 10 hours.
Senior TTD officials are closely monitoring the queues to minimise inconvenience. Apart from darshan, accommodation and tonsure queues, pilgrims had to wait for long at private restaurants as well as the TTD’s Nithayanna-danam canteen, information centres, laddu counters and even at bus stations. The heavy inflow is expected to continue till Monday, TTD officials said.
