TTD, devotees blame each other for stampede

In the last couple of days, Tirumala witnessed heavy rush of deovtees which led to a stampede-like situation leaving three of them injured. This even led the TTD authorities to revive the old practice of sarva darshanam without any slots. The TTD understood that slotted sarva darshanam was leading to more trouble and did away with it.

Around 10,000 devotees jostled for sarva darshanam tokens in Tirupati as they kept waiting in the queues from early in the morning. Some devotees lost their gold ornaments too in the jostling. The devotees charged the police with being rude and harsh with them. They also complained that the police had caned them even when they had to do rounds of the token complex as they had no clarity about the token-issuing time. There was no drinking water nor was there any shade over the queue complex, the devotees pointed out.

Some women fell unconscious unable to withstand the sweltering heat and jostling. It was utter chaos and the police also could not set things right. The police were irresponsible as they did not care to hear to the devotees’ complaints, a woman devotee said.

For more than 3-4 hours, the devotees had a tough time standing in the queue for sarva darshanam tokens in the scorching summer and things went haywire.

Understanding that the jostling was for tokens, the TTD authorities did away with the system and allowed devotees to go for the darshanam freely which brought some respite from the situation.

It is also being said that the posts used to separate the queue lines were too weak to withstand the jostling of the devotees following which they fell on one another leading to stampede-like situation.

After nearly two years, all the compartments in the Vaikuntam Complex in Tirumala were brimming with devotees. With the Covid wave giving some relief, devotees thronged the Srivari temple in large numbers.

Reacting on the jostling and stampede at Tirupati, TTD additional EO Dharma Reddy said that the devotees lacked discipline and patience, which led to the melee.

These remarks by Dharma Reddy evoked some interesting comments from Twitterati. One of the netizens suggested that the authorities could arrange training sessions by legends in discipline — former minister Kodali Nani, his colleagues Roja and Anil Yadav, at Tadepalli and then send them to Tirumala for darshanam.