TIRUMALA: A day after chaotic situation at the Slotted Sarva Darshan (SSD) counters at Tirumala, which prompted the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams to allow devotees to the hill shrine without tokens, TTD Additional EO AV Dharma Reddy on Wednesday maintained that the panic among some of the devotees at the queue lines had led to the situation. Dharma Reddy said the incident was blown out of proportion by a section of the media. He informed that ticketless entry will be continued at the temple for the time-being. Dharma Reddy said the TTD suspended the distribution of tokens on April 9 as tokens were issued for three days.
On April 12, the TTD issued 35,000 SSD tokens from 6 am. “In fact, there were only 20,000 devotees, but panic by some devotees was the cause for the stampede-like situation in the queue lines. In view of the unprecedented crowd on Tuesday, we suspended the SSD token system and allowed all devotees who assembled there to visit Tirumala temple,” he explained. Explaining that the main motto of the TTD is to provide darshan to the common people on par with the VIP devotees, he said the darshan was going on smoothly for the past 42 days.
“We have provided darshan to a minimum 59,000 to maximum 82,000 people a day between March 1 to April 13,’’ he maintained. “Anticipating the rush, we have kept the Vaikuntam Queue complex ready with water, food, breakfast and other facilities. We have shifted to a manual queue system and allowed all the devotees to visit the shrine without any ticket,’’ Dharma Reddy explained. “We could route all the devotees into compartments within half an hour. Because of the huge crowd, the devotees had to wait in the compartments till their turn for darshan. But taking advantage of the situation, some vested interests indulged in mudslinging against the TTD,’’ Dharma Reddy said.