Paid darshan banned at Shirdi for New Year weekend

Expecting a heavy rush of devotees during the New Year weekend, Shirdi’s Saibaba temple has banned paid darshans during the period. Devotees visiting the shrine during these days will need to spend six to eight hours in the queue.

Saibaba devotees visit the temple at the start of the New Year to pray for good luck.

At a meeting in Shirdi last week, the Shree Sai Sansthan decided to cancel paid darshan — where devotees pay a fee to stand in a separate short queue — from December 30 to January 2. They have also decided to keep the temple open for 24 hours on December 31.

The Saibaba temple trust gets thousands of requests for VIP darshans every day, but regular devotees are inconvenienced when their queues are stopped to enable VIPs to offer their prayers first. A year ago, the Shirdi Sansthan decided to ban VIP darshan during weekdays but allowed paid darshan on weekends between 9am and 12 noon.

“To ensure that ordinary devotees do not suffer, we have decided to do away with paid darshan during the peak season,” said Jayant Sasane, chairman, Shri Sai Sansthan.

The temple administration has increased security and deployed extra police in the temple premises. The number of attendants at the shrine has also been increased.

There are already huge crowds of devotees at the temple. The holy place is seeing more and more devotees coming in to seek blessings and there are not enough places for them all to stay overnight. Hotels in the pilgrim town have doubled their tariffs, but people are still finding it difficult to find places to stay. Even the hostels run by charity groups are full. To accommodate the rush, the trust has put up temporary shelters at its hostel campuses. More kitchen staff has also been hired to feed the pilgrims.

“We have created temporary shelters for 25,000 people and most of our staff is putting in extra working hours to manage the rush,” said Sasane.

On a regular day, over one lakh people visit the shrine - the second richest in India. On holidays and weekends, the number goes up to five lakh, and during festivals, it exceeds eight lakh. Though most devotees are from Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, a large number come from other parts of the country and abroad too. Interestingly, more young devotees are seen at the shrine at this time of the year than families.