Senior officials of TTD led by Additional Executive Officer(EO) A.V. Dharma Reddy and Tirupati legislator and special invitee of the trust board B. Karunakar reddy on Saturday inspected arrangements, for conduct of Vaikunta Ekadasi on December 25, at Tirupati where special counters for the issuance of Vaikunta Dwara darshanam are set up.
The TTD has already made it clear that it would provide 10,000 offline sarva darshan tokens every day for Vaikunta Dwara darshan till January 3 and that denizens of Tirupati alone can avail the opportunity.
This time, TTD is issuing 35,000 darshan tokens a day for the Ekadasi festival as against over one lakh during the previous years. The officials checked if all the counters had COVID protocols in place.
Speaking to mediapersons, Mr. Dharma Reddy said TTD has already released about 2 lakh special online darshan tokens of ₹300 each for all the ten days in addition to 20,000 SriVani tickets. He also appealed to non-locals not to come to Tirupati during the period and compound the difficulties of other devotees as the offline sarva darshan tokens have been exclusively earmarked for the locals.
MLA Reddy underlined the need to avoid huge gatherings and compliance of protocols. Tirupati SP Avula Ramesh reddy who also took part in the inspections said that there shall be elaborate policing at the counters and that individuals will be allowed for tokens only after scrutiny of their Aadhaar cards.
