Sabarimala crowd mess exposes lack of preparedness
This is the first full pilgrimage season at Sabarimala after the pandemic, and the Lord Ayyappa temple has received more than one lakh devotees daily for the past week. On December 10, the footfall touched 1.2 lakh, and a few pilgrims and police personnel were injured due to the heavy rush. Though the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages the temple, has extended the darshan period to 19 hours and restricted the maximum bookings in the virtual queue system to 90,000 per day, there has been no respite.
Paradoxically, the cash-strapped TDB wants to admit more pilgrims to Sabarimala, but the lack of proper amenities poses challenges. While the pilgrims wait in long queues on the mountain path leading up to the temple, there is no rush in the temple foreground and the flyover leading to the sanctum sanctorum. Pilgrims wait for hours about one kilometre away from the shrine, which underscores the mismanagement aspect of the crowd control at the temple.
On Thursday, the Devaswom minister held a meeting with the stakeholders, and it was decided to bring in more regulations to manage the crowd. While this is welcome, the fact is the temple board, controlled by the state government, failed to anticipate the rush and put facilities in place. It’s a pity that the pilgrimage centre that draws a huge number of people to Kerala and provides a seasonal boost to its tourism sector still lacks basic facilities. Though the Centre had sanctioned Rs 100 crore under Swadeshi Darshan Scheme for infrastructure development at Sabarimala, only Rs 20 crore has been utilised.
In 2005, the Centre allotted 250 acres of land at Nilakkal to develop the base camp as a transit station. The Kerala government should utilise the allocation to revamp the queue system so that more pilgrims can be accommodated. A Tirupati-model queue complex should be developed to avoid stampedes and help pilgrims wait in the queue with comfort. The temple had seen low pilgrim footfall for the last four years due to floods and Covid. That explains the huge rush this time, and the government should have been prepared. The current mess could easily lead to a tragedy. It’s time the government stopped looking at only maximising revenue from the temple and began thinking about making the pilgrimage a smooth and stress-free affair.