SABARIMALA: For the first time during the ongoing festival season, pilgrims were forced to wait for five hours in queue for darshan of Lord Ayyappa here on Saturday. An unprecedented rush of pilgrims was witnessed when the hill shrine was opened for darshan at 3.30 am. A jampacked queue was witnessed on the flyover at sopanam, holy steps, lower thirumuttam and valiyanadapandal. For the devotees who stand in queue on the north nada, the queue was extended to t he Malikappuram nadapandal.
Central para-military personnel too took part in crowd management.
The heavy rush of pilgrims witnessed at Sannidhanam for darshan forced the police to block the pilgrim flow at Pampa nadapandal from late night on Friday till 6 am on Saturday.
Long queue for neyyabhishekam A long queue of pilgrims was witnessed for neyyabhishekam offerings. The jampacked queue from 10 pm on Friday, continued till 9 am on Saturday.
Prasadam buffer stock
The buffer stock of aravana prasadam and appam was at a comfortable level of 30 lakh containers and 3.5 lakh packets respectively as on Saturday. With the opening of more prasadam counters at Malikappuram, the difficulty faced by the pilgrims by holding up in long queues came to an end, Sabarimala Devaswom executive officer Chandrasekharan Nair said.
However, the transportation of raw materials for prasadam production, including jaggery, continued to affect production capacity at present, he said.The restrictions on the tractor timing and delay in clearing the jaggery at Pampa by the Food Safety laboratory continued to affect the stock of jaggery at Sannidhanam for prasadam production. Three lorry loads of jaggery were waiting at Pampa for clearance of the Food Safety laboratory at present, Nair said.