Just as the once-in-40-years Aththi Varadhar festival is coming to a close in 10 days, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Wednesday ordered more facilities for devotees visiting Kancheepuram. As the festival concludes on August 17 (Saturday), local holiday has been announced for the Kancheepuram town for prior three week days - August 13, 14 and 16. The local holidays are aimed at easing the movement of the devotees to the temple.
The idol of Aththi Varadha Perumal was taken out of the Ananta Saras pond within Devaraja Swami temple on June 28 after a gap of 40 years and the public have been allowed to have darshan from July 1. Due to huge number of devotees visiting the temple, it has been a challenging task for the government to manage the crowd.
Chairing a high-level meeting at the secretariat on Wednesday to review the arrangements being made for Aththi Varadhar event, the chief minister said since more number of people are visiting Kancheepuram in vehicles, arrangements should be made to park these vehicles in school and college complexes and additional facilities should be made for devotees to take rest. He also announced that Kancheepuram municipality would be given a special fund to compensate the amount spent for making arrangements for the event. He also announced that those who engaged in works like providing security for the event would be given an incentive.
Earlier in the day, the chief minister released in the Secretariat a book titled 'Aththigiri' to commemorate the event which happens once in 40 years. The book explains the historical background of Devaraja
Swami temple in Kancheepuram, including its architecture. The book has been published by the HR and CE Department in three languages - Tamil, Telugu and English. The first set of copies of the book were received by Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and HR and CE Minister Sevvoor S Ramachandran.
Palaniswami also directed that more facilities should be made to help senior citizens and disabled people to wait while additional sanitary workers should be deputed from Chennai Corporation to intensify
cleaning works. He also asked the officials to depute more police personnel to strengthen the security arrangements while monitoring the supply of protected drinking water and food to devotees.
The meeting was attended by Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, nine senior ministers, Chief Secretary K Shanmugam, DGP JK Tripathy and officials from various departments.