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Full inoculation or Covid -ve report now mandatory to enter Tirumala
The decision was taken keeping in view the health security of the devotees coming to the Tirumala temple from all parts of the country amid Covid pandemic, TTD chairman Reddy said.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which manages the Lord Venkateshwara temple in Tirumala, Chittoor, on Wednesday made it mandatory for all pilgrims to produce a complete Covid vaccine certification or RT-PCR Covid negative test report, not older than three days, before entering the temple premises, chairman YV Subba Reddy said in a statement.
The decision was taken keeping in view the health security of the devotees coming from all parts of the country, he said. “Devotees coming with online special entry tickets or slotted Sarva darshan (SSD) tokens (issued to pilgrims to have free darshan of Lord) should possess either 2-dose vaccination certificate or come with Covid-19 negative test report, which they have taken three days before reporting on the allotted day of the darshan,” Reddy said in the statement.
He urged all the devotees to strictly follow the Covid-19 guidelines for their benefit as well the others. While the Tirumala temple has remained open even during the second wave of the Covid pandemic, it restricted the entry only for the pilgrims who purchased the ₹300 tickets for darshan and the VIPs.
The TTD resumed free darshan at Tirumala temple from September 9, for the sake of devotees, with certain restrictions. To start with, only 2,000 devotees, that too only from Chittoor district, were allowed in a day under the SSD token system introduced at the ticket counters at Alipiri, the foothills of Tirumala.
However, Subba Reddy announced on Wednesday that the issuance of SSD tokens for common pilgrims at the off-line counters at Alipiri would be stopped from September 26 to prevent the spread of the Covid-19. “As the overcrowding at SSD token issue centres earlier had allegedly become a source of the spread of Covid-19, the TTD has decided to do away with it and take up issuance of tokens only online,” the TTD chairman said.
