Tirumala: The temple of Lord Venkateswara has had a low crowd since the second week of April.
The number of pilgrims, which had around 50,000 followers daily until the first half of the month, fell to just over 20,000 pilgrims from April 12 with the lifting of Sarva darshanam – a decision made to prevent the spread of the second wave of COVID contain. 19th
According to statistics, the temple had seen more than 20,000 steps in only five days in the past fourteen days. On all of the other eleven days, the crowd was well below the mark. The fact that the temple registered a crowd of around 9,640 and 6,431 pilgrims on April 29th and 30th, speaks for the watered down situation.
Reasons for the sudden drop in the number of pilgrims are due to the reduction in darshan stamps in the last week of March from 30,000 to 15,000 per day, followed by their lifting afterwards.
The low turnout also had a direct impact on income from Hundi Temple, which is the main source of income for the facility.
The hundred income, which gradually rose to 80 to 85 crore per month after the five-step unlocking process announced by the central government, plummeted and has been 2 crore per day since the second week of April.
Statistics show that the hundred income has not exceeded the 2 crore mark for about eleven days in the past fourteen days. It even failed to register Rs. 1 crore mark in three days and an all time low of £ 62 lakhs on April 29th.
As things stand, TTD cut its £ 300-per-day darshan ticket issuance from 30,000 to 15,000 per day from May 1, amid fears the second wave of the pandemic could engulf the country. The irony is that the darshan tickets, which tend to evaporate within a few days of their release, are surprisingly still available in sufficient numbers on most days of the current month.
Officials unwilling to be cited expressed concern about the surge in positive cases across the country and feared that if the situation escalated further, the financial health of the institute, which was now returning to normal, would be at stake again .