PATHANAMTHITTA: With Sabarimala all set for Mandala Pooja on Wednesday, the hill shrine has been witnessing a heavy rush of pilgrims. As many as 25,69,671 pilgrims visited the temple till Saturday during this Mandalam-Makaravilakku season. Over 97,000 pilgrims visited the hill shrine on Saturday alone.
To ensure proper crowd management at Nilakkal, Pampa and Sannidhanam, police have imposed traffic regulations at halting places (edathavalam) like Erumeli and other places in Pathanamthitta. On Sunday, the rush meant that the pilgrims took more than 12 hours to reach Sannidhanam from Pampa.
Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) president P S Prasanth said, currently, the spot bookings permitted per day is 10,000. “The Kerala High Court had said that TDB can decide whether spot booking needs to be increased to 15,000.
“A decision on whether to increase the number of slots from January, when the temple opens for Makaravilakku festival, will be taken after seeking the opinion of the state government,” Prasanth told reporters while explaining the arrangements being made for Mandala Maholsavam at Sabarimala.
“The virtual queue booking is limited to 64,000 on December 26 and 70,000 on December 27 — the Mandala Pooja day. From January, the virtual queue booking slots will be increased to 80,000,” he said. Meanwhile, the TDB president dismissed reports of imposing limitations on the distribution of appam and aravana offerings.
He said the TDB faced a delay in delivering jaggery due to traffic issues. “We have contracted companies in Maharashtra to supply jaggery for the Mandalam-Makarav ilakku season,” said Prasanth.
‘TDB will procure 5L kg of jaggery from local suppliers’
“As per the contract, they need to supply three loads of jaggery (32 tonnes each) daily for manufacturing the offerings. The load, which was scheduled to reach here by 6 pm on December 22, arrived at 9 am the next day. So, we soon regulated the distribution of offerings for some time to ensure the availability of the offerings to all pilgrims.
To ensure uninterrupted distribution of these offerings, the TDB will procure 5 lakh kilogram of jaggery from local suppliers. We have invited tenders in this regard. The tenders will be opened on December 25 evening. Once the tender is approved, we hope that sufficient jaggery can be brought soon so that we can meet the demand for these offerings for the entire season smoothly,” the TDB president said.
“At the same time, there will be a change in the pooja schedule in connection with the Mandala Pooja. On Tuesday afternoon, the temple will be reopened only at 5 pm as against the normal schedule of 3 pm. The Mandala pooja will be held on Wednesday between 10.30 am and 11.30 am. So Neyyabhishekam can be conducted only till 9.45 am as against the normal schedule of 11.30 am,” he said.