More than 90,000 devotees visit Tirupati Lord Balaji temple in Tirumala before public holidays
Tirumala, known as a shrine to the richest Hindu God, Lord Venkateshwara, sees a lot of devotees every day.
In view of public holidays, an unexpected crowd gathered at the famous Lord Balaji temple at Tirumala for paying a visit to the Tirupati shrine.
Tirumala, known as a shrine to the richest Hindu God, Lord Venkateshwara, sees plentiful devotees every day. On average, it usually takes a few hours, sometimes even a day in a queue to reach the sanctum sanctorum.
Earlier, two US-based NRI businessmen had on Friday donated Rs 14 crores to the famed hill shrine of Lord Balaji here, after performing special pujas with their families.
The donation was done on the auspicious occasion of Varalakshmi puja here on the second Friday in the month of Sawan as per Telugu calendar.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) Board has recently announced the removal of the VVIP Darshan slots called L1, L2, L3, which classified different visitors in different slots according to the privilege.
This dictated the time taken to pay a visit to the Lord. L1 is considered to be the topmost in the VVIPs category, the other slots lesser than that. The VVIPs usually took only a few minutes to reach the sanctum sanctorum, which was unfair to the common public who had come to visit the temple.
An appeal was issued to pilgrims earlier which said that while VIP self arrival would be accepted, VVIP referral letters would not be.
The VVIP referral letters for the weekend had already been rejected in view of the common pilgrims.
From now on, only the rule of 'sarvadarshanam' i.e. free darshan for everyone will be followed, and the VIP darshan kept only for very special dignitaries, said TTD Special officer AV Dharma Reddy.
Following this, more than 90,000 visitors had flocked to the Tirupati temple at Tirumala on Saturday for a visit to the Lord, and the number is expected to increase further in the coming days.
Additionally, all online and offline booking tickets for the Divya Darshan over the weekend are already booked.