The summer crowd was at its best for the TTD — the sole custodian of the famous hill temple of Lord Venkateswara — if one was to go by the statistics. Whether it is darshan, accommodation, tonsuring or the sale of ‘laddu prasadam’ the numerals remain shattered in all aspects when compared with the figures of the previous year.
While 23.78 lakh pilgrims had the darshan of the presiding deity as against 20.41 lakhs during last year’s May — when the influx in the visiting crowd remains at its zenith, laddu sales registered an all-time high of 89.85 lakhs — up by 9.20 lakh laddus when compared with last year.
Revealing the statistics on Friday, TTD EO D. Sambasiva Rao said that over 14.02 lakhs got their heads tonsured as against 12.54 lakhs the previous May, while the revenue earned through accommodation which as never before saw an increase of 11% in the occupancy ratio fetched an additional revenue of Rs. 1.53 crores this May alone.
