Mass cleaning held at shrine as part of ‘Suddha Tirumala-Sundara Tirumala’

Tirumala : A mass cleaning program covering up and down ghat road, Alipiri and Srivari Mettu footpaths was held on Saturday under Suddha Tirumala-Sundara Tirumala cleaning drive taken up by TTD to improve cleanliness and make holy hills litter free. The programme commenced at Alipiri at 6 am on Saturday with former Chief Justice of India NV Ramana flagging off the programme in which about 1,000 people, including officials and staff from TTD, district administration, Municipal Corporation, , Swachandhra Corporation, Srivari Sevaks participated.

Former CJI along with TTD EO A V Dharma Reddy took part in the cleaning at 7th Mile Anjaneya idol area while the district collector K Venkataramana Reddy and his team, Swachh Andhra Pradesh Corporation Advisor Jayaprakash Sai and his team taking part at up ghat which was coordinated by JEO Veerabrahmam. While the down ghat road cleaning was carried out under JEO for health and education Sada Bhargavi, Municipal Corporation officials and staff participated in the mass cleaning at Mokalimettu and district SP P Parameshwar Reddy and TTD CVSO Narasimha Kishore in the Alipiri footpath route. The Srivarimettu route was cleaned by SVBC CEO Shanmukh Kumar and his team.

In this mass cleaning drive a total of about 1600 bags of plastic wastes have been lifted which included 580 in first ghat road(down), 680 in second(upghat), around 300 in Alipiri and 70 in Srivarimettu routes.

Among other officials who participated in this mass cleaning of Tirumala routes drive were TTD Law Officer Veeraju, FACAO Balaji, chief engineer Nageswara Rao and other heads of departments.

Speaking on the occasion, former CJI Ramana said it is the prime responsibility of every Srivari devotee to protect and preserve the sanctity of Tirumala by keeping the environs clean and hygiene. “Just like everyone clean the puja room in their homes, they should strive to keep the holy shrine clean and become partners in TTD efforts to make the pilgrim center of Tirumala plastic-free,” he said.

Later, the TTD EO said when the sanitary workers recently went on a flash strike in Tirumala, TTD had ensured that the pilgrims were not put to any inconvenience by deploying workers from other panchayats and municipalities and also taking up voluntary cleaning by TTD employees, Srivari sevaks and others.

To continue the voluntary cleaning in the same spirit, TTD decided to take up the cleaning under Suddha Tirumala-Sudha Tirumala programme every second Saturday, the EO said.