The month-long ‘Margasira masa’ festival got off to a colourful start amid religious fervour and chanting of hymns by priests with hundreds of devotees thronging Sri Kanakamahalakshmi temple in the old city on day one on Monday.
Visakhapatnam South MLA Vasupalli Ganesh Kumar formally launched the festivities. He participated in first puja of the presiding deity.
Elaborate arrangements were made by the devasthanam authorities for devotees visiting the temple. Pandals were erected over a long stretch and the temple was brightly illuminated.
Quick darshan
“This year we introduced a special quick darshan of ₹500 on Thursdays following requests from people from far-off places. This will be in addition to regular queue lines,” said temple executive officer Jyothi Madhavi. “We are expecting over 75,000 devotees on first two Thursdays and over one lakh devotees on last two Thursdays. Apart from endowment staff, volunteers would be deployed to help devotees in queue lines,” Ms. Jyothi Madhavi said.
Besides ‘panchamruthabhishekam’ and ‘ksheerabhisheka seva’, special programmes ‘Lakshmi homam’, and ‘Srichakrapuja’ would be conducted during the month.
Temple witnessed a tremendous growth in revenue and number of people visiting it in the last three decades. According to assistant executive officer Rambabu the temple annual revenue was just a few lakhs in late 80s and it jumped to over ₹10 crore last year. Even number of devotees visiting the temple rose from over a lakh to nearly 15 lakhs, he said.
Mr. Rambabu said they were arranging ‘annadanam’ for 3000 persons throughout the month and ‘Maha annadanam’ would be organised on last Thursday. Special buses would be operated from different parts of the city to temple free of cost.