The last mile divine connectivity with Lord Balaji -journey of 70 feet to the idol of Lord Venkateswara – inside the Srivari Temple at Tirumala has now been made easy, comfortable and without rigors of body push by volunteers and agitated shouts of devotees.
Now pilgrims can have a peaceful and clear darshan of their beloved deity and also offer prayer to the lord, after hours of waiting in the queue line without any push and pull hassle. The new three layered darshan system introduced by the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams (TTD) from 29 May this year has been a success among the devotees and started yielding positive feedback.
The new system a brain child of TTD executive officer MG Gopal, splits the pilgrims into three lines of queues so that they can spend the last few seconds and minutes of darshan time at three elevated levels from Garudalwar to Jayavijaya idols (app 20 feet) without being pushed around. The TTD engineering officials have set up wooden platforms at different heights to form three layers for the movement of the pilgrims in easy queue lines .
The first platform is raised at a height of 16 inches, the second at seven inches and the third is at the floor level. The different heights all the three lines in single indiduvial format all the way up to deity will enable pilgrims to pass thorough the 70 feet path to the idol and have darshan of Lord Venkateswara without any manual or mechanical obstruction.
‘Generally the distance from the Sanctum Sanctorum and the end of queue line in Mahalaghu darshan is 70 feet, in Laghu darshan it is 50 feet and 20 feet is the region where all the devotees are mixed, resulting in excited thrust for Lords glimpse’ a TTD spokesperson said.
The elevated wooden platforms will be removed during arjita sevas, VIP break and also special visits and re erected. With the success of the layered darshan, mood of the TTD management is upbeat as they have noted a remarkable increase in the number and satisfaction among devotees. ‘While close to 4,000 devotees were able to have darshan every hour earlier, the new three-layered queue system allowed 500 more and also hassle free’ says Executive Officer Gopal.
According to TTD data, the number of pilgrims who had darshan of lord in the year 2013 in the month of June was While 20, 82,704 had darshan in June 2013, the number was up by 13,000 more (20, 95,695) in June 2014 an increase of 12,991 with the introduction of new darshan system inside Srivari temple.
