Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam: Devotees get darshan tokens for Vaikunta Ekadashi
TIRUPATI: Thousands of devotees have obtained their Slotted Sarva Darshan (SSD) free tokens for Vaikunta Ekadasi and Vaikunta Dwara Darshan Tirumala in a hassle-free manner from the token counters set up in Tirupati, thanks to the foolproof arrangements made by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) Vigilance and Tirupati police.
Given past experiences, the TTD has set up nearly 100 counters at nine locations to issue 4.5 lakh free SSD tokens to devotees, 45,000 per day, for the 10-day Vaikunta Dwara Darshan fete from January 2 to 11, to be celebrated in Tirumala.
Devotees who came from far-off places to have darshan of Lord Sri Venkateswara during Vaikunta Dwara Darshan made a beeline in front of the nine SSD token issuing counters from Saturday night itself, forcing the TTD authorities to start the issuance of tokens from 1 am on Sunday, earlier than the scheduled time of Sunday afternoon.To avoid devotees stampeding, the authorities have set up serpentine queues by erecting barricades at all the nine counters, which were mostly set up in the vast open grounds in Tirupati.
Further, the QR code scanner released by the TTD authorities allows the devotees to get knowledge about the nearest token counter from their place, and access the date and time slot of the tokens issued at the token counters on a real-time basis through it, helped dissolve devotees equivalently to all the nine counters instead gathering at one particular token counter.
“Credit to TTD and the police department for seamless management at the token counters. Pandals, water and toilets at the counters ensured no inconvenience was caused for devotees,” Yash, a devotee who availed his time-slot token at Ramachandra Pushkarini on Sunday morning told. Devotees said the waiting time to obtain time-slot tokens was less than 30 minutes, which was about one hour on Saturday midnight when the counters started issuing tokens.
Uncertainty over accommodation
Though a majority of the devotees who obtained tokens are from Tirupati and neighbouring suburbs; devotees who came from far-off places and got tokens after January 5 were left in uncertainty and raised doubts over the accommodation for days together in Tirupati. At the time of report filing, the counters were issuing tokens for January 5.