Devotees with tickets alone will be allowed for darshan: TTD EO KS Jawahar Reddy

Tirumala: Only devotees with darshan tickets are alone allowed to go for the darshan of Lord Venkateswara in Tirumala, said TTD EO Dr K S Jawahar Reddy.

Talking to media persons after inspecting the arrangements in Tirumala on Wednesday, he said the TTD has already made it clear that only devotees who have tickets and tokens for Vaikunta Dwara Darshan will be allowed to go to Tirumala from Alipiri. "Due to prevailing conditions of Covid-19, we already issued two lakh Rs 300 darshan tickets online and are going to issue 1 lakh tickets offline on December 24 in Tirupati. We will allow only those devotees with tickets and tokens to enter Tirumala. We are again appealing to devotees not to come to Tirumala without tickets or tokens," he reiterated.

The EO reiterated the TTD decision not to allow devotees to go Tirumala without any darshan tickets following groups of pilgrims protested at Alipiri, the origin point of Tirumala after they were stopped by TTD security personnel on Tuesday and Wednesday as they have no tickets.

The pilgrims observing Govinda Mala Vrutham came all the way on foot for darshan which they are following for long criticised TTD management stopping the issuing of offline token for 10 days and wanted the TTD issue a limited number of tokens daily for the sake of ardent devotees for darshan.

The devotees including women wearing traditional yellow dress, from far off places observed sit in protest at Alipiri and repeatedly pleaded with the security and police officials to allow them to go to Tirumala but in vain. Despite wide publicity on the closure of offline tokens for outsiders till January 3, many pilgrims reaching Tirupati only to return disappointed with no issuing of tokens.

It may be noted here that TTD had already issued online Rs 300 special entry tickets for darshan from December 25 to January 3 and stopped issuing offline tokens at the counters in Tirupati after the tickets for darshan upto December 24 was over. TTD will issue offline tokens only for locals which will start from December 24 and will continue till the tickets are exhausted for darshan from December 25 to January 3. The TTD EO earlier inspected the arrangements along with Additional EO AV Dharma Reddy.