TIRUPATI: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which has suspended ‘sarvadarshan’ since April 12 due to the second wave of Covid-19, will take a call on resumption of free darshan at Lord Venkateswara temple once the Covid-19 caseload in the state falls below one per cent.
TTD executive officer KS Jawahar Reddy said ‘sarvadarshan’ at the hill temple is expected to resume soon. “We are not against free darshan. But our primary concern is the safety of visiting devotees. It will be difficult to maintain Covid-19 guidelines once free darshan resumes. The long queue lines may pose health risk to the devotees. We are waiting for the daily cases to come down. Once the positivity rate falls below one per cent, sarvadarshan will resume,” he said.
The temple body took the step to reduce pilgrim footfall when daily Covid cases and fatalities surged to record highs and suspended the issuance of free darshan tokens for common devotees. But it continues to facilitate darshan for devotees who buy darshan tickets under different categories including the 300 special entry, VIP break darshan, Srivani trust-linked darshan and select virtual sevas.
Meanwhile, the temple body has decided to offer anna prasadams cooked out of organic produce to devotees. The temple body has sourced over 1 crore worth organic produce directly from farmers from different parts of the country to start the process of offering ‘organic’ anna prasadams like pongal, chakkera pongal, pulihora, seera, etc. to visiting devotees. It plans to scale up production in sync with pilgrim footfall to the hill town.
