Pomp and gaiety mark Rathasapthami in Arasavalli

Srikakulam: Rathasapthami was celebrated with pomp and gaiety at Sun God temple in Arasavalli on Saturday. Since morning the hundreds of devotees thronged the temple and performed special pujas on the auspicious occasion. The devotees who purchased Rs 500 tickets for special darshan had to wait for more than three hours in the queue lines.

Meanwhile the temple received showers at 11 am causing a bit inconvenience to visiting devotees. However, the showers brought a relief to devotees from raising temperatures in the district.

Meanwhile controversy erupted among revenue, endowment and police officials due to issuance of huge number of vehicles' passes. As per protocol department officials' calculations, only 50 VIPs in the district are eligible to get vehicle passes to reach temple arch. But police issued 500 vehicles' passes to retired officials, former politicians, officers working in other districts who are no way connected to the festival duties and also not eligible to get protocol honour. Devotees who reached to the temple on these vehicles were directly sent into Rs 500 tickets queue line. As a result, ticket purchasers had to face trouble to have darshan of temple shrine. No separate arrangements have been made for differently abled and senior citizens.

Festival begins on Friday night after handing over of silk vastrams to the temple deity by the Visakhapatnam-based Sarada Peetham pontiff Swathma Nandendra Swamy. Later Ministers for Endowments and Roads and Buildings Vellampalli Srinivas and Dharmana Krishna Das, Brahmin Corporation Chairman Malladi Vishnu handed over silk vastrams to the temple shrine on behalf of the government. Assembly Speaker Tammineni Sitaram, MLAs had a darshan of the Sun God. District Collector J Nivas, SP R N Ammi Reddy supervised the clearance of devotees' rush. RDO M V Ramana and Temple EO V Hari Surya Prakash Rao received the devotees at main arch and at Anivetti Mantapam.