Srikalahasti decked up for Maha Sivaratri fete

Tirupati: All set to celebrate Maha Sivaratri festival at the major Srikalahasti temple on Monday march 4 in the Chittoor district.  The temple, popularly known as Dakshina Kasi, has been decorated with electrical illumination and flowers for the festival. For the last one week all the officials of endowments department have been making arrangements for celebrating Sivaratri in a grand manner.

Officials are anticipating a huge turnout of devotees up to 1 lakh at Kalahasti temple for offering prayers to Lord Siva on the day of Maha Sirvaratri. Already, district collector P S Pradyumana inspected the arrangements at the temple and issued necessary instructions to the officials a week ago on security, queue lines as well as vehicle parking arrangements at the temple. 

The collector instructed the official to provide hassle-free darshan to common devotees, and also ordered to make arrangements for availability of sufficient drinking water.  CC cameras will be set up at all the important places in and around of the Srikalahasti temple. 

Temple executive officer (EO) S Rama Swamy has taken all the measures necessary to facilitate smooth darshan, availability of drinking water, additional toilets to devotees besides setting up of additional sales counters.

Tirupati Urban police officials have drafted more than 1,500 police personnel for bandobust in view of Maha Sivarathri. Urban SP K K N Anburajan is directly supervising the security arrangements at the temple.

Police set up a temporary command control centre to prevent any untoward incidents through monitoring of CC cameras. Children will be tagged with wrist bands with details of their parents to prevent they go missing. This practice has been going on at Tirumala.

In view Sirkalahasti Brhamostvams, local police had diverted all the vehicles from outskirts of the town via bypass road. Devotees’ vehicles are being diverted to designated parking areas near the temple at Swarnamukhi river side.

Endowments officials have cancelled all the special arjitha sevas on the Maha Sivaratri day permitting only the devotees through Sarvadarshan queue line.

Protocol VIPs will be allowed through special entry, according to temple sources. The devotees will be allowed a darshan of the Lord from the early hours of Monday to early hours of Tuesday.