CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed as withdrawn a writ petition praying for a direction to the HR&CE Commissioner and the Kancheepuram district Collector to extend the darshan period of Aththi Varadhar of Sri Varadaraja Perumal temple in Kancheepuram, by 10 more days.
The writ petition from the International Sri Vaishnava Ramanuja Samrajaya Sabha, by its president Swami Govinda Ramanuja Dasha, prayed for a direction to the authorities concerned to extend the darshan period by 10 more days from August 17, as allegedly proposed by the Tamil Nadu government.
When the petition came up for hearing today, Justice P D Audikesavalu told the petitioner, who appeared party-in-person, that a writ will not lie with the prayer. When the judge advised him to withdraw the petition or otherwise, he will impose cost on him, the petitioner preferred to withdraw the writ petition. The judge, however, granted liberty to the petitioner to file a PIL petition.
Lakhs of devotees have been thronging the temple in the last month to get a glimpse of the idol. About 10 have died due to suffocation though the state government said in many cases the reason of death was health issues. A few devotees had also blamed improper crowd management as the main reason for the devotees getting hurt and fainting while waiting in the queue.
Toilet and drinking water facilities near the temple were also inadequate due to the unexpected levels of crowd. The state government also pressed in senior officials to inspect the arrangements and allocated more funds for the facilities.
In another petition, one Tamizharasi of Meensurutti village in Ariyalur district alleged that the arrangements made for the crowd management by the district administration and the police was very poor. This failure on the part of the State has resulted in a large number of devotees not able to get even a glimpse of Athi Varadar, leave alone a ‘Divya Darshan’, which takes place once in 40 years. She prayed the court to order extension of the time by one more 'Mandalam' (48 days).