Unwell pilgrims urged to defer Tirumala visit

Tirumala : TTD chairman Y V Subba Reddy reiterated that adhering to Covid guidelines is mandatory to all devotees coming for darshan.

The chairman, who reviewed the safety arrangements taken up keeping in view the spike in Covid cases with TTD officials at the Annamaiah Bhavan here on Friday, once again appealed to the devotees suffering from cold, cough and fever to postpone their Tirumala pilgrimage.

The TTD had provided an option to utilise their online bookings of tickets for darshan till the end of 2021, he pointed out.

Speaking to media persons after the meeting, Subba Reddy said the TTD had slashed Rs 300 special entry darshan tickets to 15,000 daily for the month of May in view of the pandemic but the booking of tickets had shown a downswing with pilgrims wary of travel due to the severity of pandemic. He said the TTD had decided to take up Covid vaccination covering all its employees working both at Tirumala and Tirupati in 15 days

He said the management would provide all help to the families of 15 employees who died of Covid and expressed his condolences to the bereaved families. The chairman also directed officials make the payments towards the hospital charges for the employees availing Covid treatment in private hospitals.

Responding to the employees' demand, he said currently TTD was facilitating employees of Tirumala to attend office on a 50:50 ratio and the same formula would be followed in attendance for employees of Tirupati as well. In other words half of the employees would work from home and remaining attends office.

He directed the officials to organise special buses to ferry TTD employees to Tirumala and back and also beds with oxygen and ventilator at BIRRD hospital for employees.

The chairman said from May 1, Saturday, on an experimental basis TTD will use organic farm products for preparation of Naivedyam, in cooperation with Vijayram, a farmer from Pinagudurulanka village of Krishna district who donated organic rice and other items to TTD.

Plans are afoot to use organic farm products for preparation of Srivari laddu and vada prasadam in the second phase and thereafter in the Anna Prasadam of devotees served at Sri Tarigonda Vengamamba Anna Prasadam Bhavan in the third phase.

The TTD has plans to make farmers of Telugu states as partners in the divine venture by giving them special training in growing organic products avoiding pesticides and fertilisers. TTD is also contemplating to take up organic farming in its agricultural lands which were donated by devotees to TTD.

After the review meeting, the TTD chairman inspected the arrangements at special darshan ticket entry complex in Vaikunta Queue Complex to ensure safety norms, including soap liquid, hand sanitisers, scanning point, ozone sanitisers at Mahadwaram and social distancing in the queue lines.

The TTD chairman made several suggestions to officials on streamlining of queue lines at Padi Kavali onwards (main entrance) to see pilgrims maintain social distance.

TTD additional EO A V Dharma Reddy, TTD board members Sekhar Reddy, Shivkumar, Muralikrishna, Dy EO Harindranath and health officer Dr R R Reddy and others were present.