Sabarimala: Amid criticism against the government and Travancore Devaswom Board over the alleged mismanagement of the Sabarimala pilgrimage, latest reports say that the situation finally eased as numerous devotees who complained of long queues returned home after completing the darshan by Wednesday night. Crowding in the Lord Ayappa temple was in the headlines since December 7 as the pilgrims including children and women got stuck on the roads and trekking paths to the shrine and stood in long queues for up to 18 hours to have darshan.
Though the inflow of pilgrims, by and large, remained the same, the improvement in the situation is largely due to crowd control measures introduced by the authorities on a war footing. According to officials, 50,162 pilgrims availed of the virtual queue facility till 6 pm as against 90, 889 people offering the prayers the previous day.
The serpentine queues could be witnessed even during the day on Wednesday, but the waiting period for darshan began to reduce rapidly towards the evening.
Soon, the police lifted curbs for onward movement of pilgrims from stop-over points (Idathavalam). Unlike the previous days, the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation could operate full-fledged services between Nilakkal and Pampa, an average of 65 services per hour. This facilitated the quick return of devotees who had darshan to Nilakkal where their vehicles had been parked.
The parking grounds at Nilakkal, which was full till Wednesday morning, could accommodate the vehicles that reached the base camp, nearly 18 km away from Pampa, during the day.
1350 police personnel on duty
Meanwhile, District Police Chief V Ajith said a total of 1350 police personnel are currently deployed in Sabarimala, including 600 policemen at Pampa and 450 at Nilakkal.
“Last year too, we’ve deployed roughly the same number of police personnel,” he said while rejecting reports of limiting police force for Sabarimala this time due to the ongoing Nava Kerala sadas.
