TIRUCHY: The revised darshan fare brought in to regulate crowd movement kicked off at the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam on Tuesday.
The temple authorities had recently announced scrapping of the Rs 50- and Rs 250- darshan tickets and replacing them with a Rs 100-ticket.
Accordingly, special arrangements have been put in place on the temple premises.
Instead of the three-queue system, the free- and paid- darshan queues begin near the 'kodimaram', where boards displaying the revised darshan fare direct devotees to the ticket counters. Temple workers also guided them.
On the arrangements, temple Joint Commissioner Marimuthu said, “Having just one pathway for entering the temple sanctum, allowing devotees in three queues often caused crowding issues near the ‘nazhi kettan vaasal'. In order to prevent crowding issues and to ease the queue movement during festival season, we have revised the paid darshan tickets to just one category (Rs 100). So now there are only two queues (free darshan and paid darshan). The barricading arrangements inside the temple have also been modified as per the fare revision."
Currently both the queues run to almost the same length, Marimuthu added.
If devotees wished to leave immediately after completing darshan, they can go through the 'Thondaiman Medu' gate. Other devotees can go to 'kili mandapam' for darshan and come out through the 'nazhi kettan vaasal' to reach the second praharam. Facilities have been put in place for all the devotees to circambulate the second praharam, Marimuthu further said.
Giritharan, a devotee, said, "Considering the waiting time, we usually opt for the paid darshan queues, especially during festival season. Earlier, being a ten-member family it was difficult to spend Rs 250 per person on darshan tickets, and so we had been opting for the Rs 50 tickets. But the revised price for paid darshan is more affordable."