Tirupati: Record 48,462 devotees have Vaikunta Dwara Darshan of Lord

Tirupati: Tirumala is witnessing pilgrim rush due to the 10-day Vaikunta Dwara Darshan coupled with the advent of the New Year.

On Saturday, the penultimate day of the Vaikunta Dwara Darshan, 48,462 pilgrims had darshan which is the highest after the famed shrine was opened for darshan on June 11 this year after remaining closed for nearly 80 days following the nation-wide lockdown due to the pandemic Covid-19.

Temple sources said that as employees including retired employees turned in large numbers with families for the rare Vaikunta Dwara Darshan, before its closure on Sunday, lead to the number of pilgrims who had darshan going beyond 48,000 which is highest so far.

On Sunday also the rush of pilgrims was more as it was the last day of the Vaikunta Dwara Darshan.

It may be noted here that the TTD in a path-breaking move decided to provide the much sought after Vaikunta Dwara Darshan for 10 days instead of the previous practice of two days only on Vaikunta Ekadasi and Dwadasi in an effort to provide the Dwara Darshan to more number of devotees who naturally hailed the TTD for its decision.

Besides extending the period of Vaikunta Dwara Darshan, the TTD management also for the first time provided 10,000 offline SSD tokens to locals for the Uttara Dwara Darshan, responding to the representation of city MLA Bhumana Karunakar Reddy winning the appreciation of locals who hitherto had no such facility for darshan during the auspicious Vaikunta Ekadasi fete.