Tirumala: TTD to facilitate rescheduling of darshan

Tirumala: For the sake of the pilgrims who could not make it for darshan due to inclement weather conditions in Tirumala and Tirupati despite having tickets, TTD will introduce a special software for facilitating darshan, said TTD additional executive officer AV Dharma Reddy.

In a review held at Annamaiah Bhavan here on Monday evening, the additional EO said as per the directions of TTD chairman YV Subba Reddy and EO K S Jawahar Reddy, it has been decided that the devotees who missed Srivari darshan in spite of valid tickets owing to bad weather conditions in Tirumala and Tirupati, will be facilitated with rescheduling of darshan which they could avail in six months.

He directed the IT wing of TTD to develop separate software enabling the facility by November 30.

The devotees who have darshan tickets valid between November 18 to 30 shall avail darshan with the same tickets in Tirumala before November 30.

The devotees willing to have Srivari darshan from December onwards, shall have to reschedule their darshan date within six months by entering the old ticket number in the new software which will be available at their disposal from November 30, he added.

He also directed the IT wing to ensure measures that their IT infrastructure remains intact and should not go down in any eventuality.

Dharma Reddy also said the devotees shall come for Srivari darshan without any fear. Due to the recent unprecedented downpour, only two suites out of 7,000 rooms in Tirumala got affected. These two rooms in Narayanagiri Rest House were being repaired and would be put back into operation as early as possible.

He said, there was no damage to the Alipiri footpath route, however, the Srivarimettu footpath route got affected due to the damage caused to the four culverts following heavy rains.

As there is no possibility of any transportation mechanism in this route, the repair works of this footpath will take some time and it was temporarily shut down as of now.

Later, he instructed all the concerned to ensure steps to drain out rainwater stagnated inside Srivari temple and take up the repair works on war-footing at Vaikuntham queue complex gardens, museum, etc.,

The Additional EO said the landslides occurred at 13 different points in the ghat roads obstructing the vehicular movement following the heavy rains on November 18. However, TTD has restored down ghat road services in a short time enabling vehicular movement. Though the up ghat road is also restored now, in view of the fresh weather forecast of the possibility of heavy downpour from November 26 onwards, the engineering and health department have been kept on alert.

"All our officials and employees worked round-the-clock and restored all the disrupted services within a short time on November 18 and 19 due to unprecedented downpour," he said.

He said that all steps have been initiated to ensure that devotees are not put to any sort of hardships facilitating Srivari darshan.