1.71 lakh devotees had Lord's darshan in 2 days in Tirumala

Tirupati: A total of 1,71,579 devotees had darshan of Lord Venkateswara in two days i.e on Saturday and Sunday, which is highest in the recent months. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the temple management has geared up and effectively handled the heavy influx of pilgrims since Friday, resulting in a maximum number of pilgrims had darshan on Saturday and Sunday.

The TTD to facilitate darshan to more number of pilgrims and to cope with the heavy rush, slashed the VIP break darshan and other payment based darshans like Vani Trust tickets etc, which yielded good results much to the relief of ordinary pilgrims. In addition to increasing the darshan time for common pilgrims, the temple management also made arrangements on a massive scale for providing food and water to the waiting pilgrims in the two wmassive queue complexes, Narayanagiri Gardens and in the queue lines outside the queue complex, easing out the inconvenience of pilgrims waiting for long for darshan.

Temple sources said that with the clearance of maximum number of pilgrims, the waiting time for tokenless pilgrims, which was two days on Friday, was brought down to less than a day now.

TTD sources said the cash offerings received in the famed Tirumala temple in the two days was Rs 9.07 crore including Rs 4.21 crore (Saturday) and Rs 4.86 crore (Sunday). The number of tonsures was also high with 72,000 pilgrims tonsured their heads in the tonsure centres which functioned round-the-clock, in fulfilment of their vows, a TTD official said.