Indrakeeladri witnesses heavy rush of devotees

Vijayawada: Heavy rush of devotees was seen at Sri Durga Malleswara Swamyvarla Devasthanam, Durga temple on Indrakeeladri on the fourth day of the Dasara festivities.

The devotees in the free queue lines had to wait for more than four hours on Sunday for the darshan of Goddess. The presiding deity was adorned as Sri Lalitha Tirupura Sundari Devi. The district administration has arranged five queue lines, including two free queue lines and three lines for the tickets of Rs 500, Rs 300 and Rs 100.

NTR District Collector G Srijana and Commissioner of Police SV Rajasekhara Babu personally inspected the queue lines and spoke to the devotees. They instructed the officials to ensure hassle-free darshan and supply of adequate drinking water, butter milk and milk in the queue lines.

On the first day, 40,000 devotees visited the temple and 49,000 and 57,000 devotees on the second and third day. On the fourth day, there was a very heavy rush.

Interestingly, Rs 500 ticket queue line was also very crowded and devotees were asked to wait nearly 30 minutes to get into the line. Some devotees expressed ire on the temple staff for the delay. On the other hand, police faced a difficult time to control the queue lines at the OM Turning point on the ghat road where vehicles were stopped.

One gate was arranged for VIP darshan and the other is for VIP protocol darshan. Common people passing in the free darshan queue lines had to wait for four to five hours in the scorching heat and sultry weather.

A large number of drinking water bottles supplied to the devotees at the queue lines were very useful to the devotees and provided them much needed relief in the hot and humid conditions.

The district administration has arranged queue lines to prevent stampede and untoward incidents. Consequently, the devotees moved in queue lines without any hindrance and difficulty. Senior citizens faced inconvenience due to slow passing of queue lines. Adequate traffic police were posted on Canal road, Kummaripalem junction and other places to regulate the traffic.

The temple administration said that 5,764 tickets of Rs 500, 2,957 tickets of Rs 300 and 5,395 tickets of Rs 100 were sold by 5 pm. on Sunday. The temple received income of Rs 28,82,000, Rs 8,87,100 and Rs 5,39,500 on sale these tickets.

Besides, Rs 3.08 lakh was earned through sale of 20,591 laddus till 5 pm on Sunday evening.