TTD begins trial run for Slotted Sarva Darshan token issue

Tirumala: As TTD is all set to launch the Slotted Sarva Darshan (SSD) soon for the pilgrims, a trial run of the system was held in Tirumala at a SSD counter on Thursday for issue of SSD tokens. The staff members of both TTD and TCS took the tokens at the SSD counters located in RTC bus stand in Tirumala.

Speaking on the occasion, TTD JEO K S Sreenivasa Raju said TTD had contemplated SSD counters for issuing tokens indicating the time slot for Darshan for Sarva Darshan pilgrims in order to minimise the inconvenience of long waiting hours for the pilgrims in queue lines and compartments. A week-long trial run with Aadhaar as mandatory was made in December last which yielded good results. 

However, in the wake of the legal restrictions imposed on making Aadhaar card mandatory by Supreme Court, TTD has now made both Aadhaar and voter ID cards as proof of identity to obtain tokens. “In the next few days, we will allow limited number of pilgrims only in this RTC bus stand SSD counter to verify and assess working of the application,” said Sreenivasa Raju.

To assess the same, an experiment with TTD and TCS employees will be done for next few days before launching it for the public in a full-fledged manner. “As the TTD board will also be sworn in next couple of days, we will launch SSD counters on an auspicious day," he added. TTD senior officials were present at the start of trial run.