Taking a serious note of the crowd flow to Sabarimala in the previous season, which stretched the pilgrim management protocol in the holy hillock to its limit, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) is implementing measures to regulate the rush from the next season onwards.
Officials say only those who have booked their spots for darshan through the virtual queue system will be permitted to trek up the hillock, while all spot booking facilities, including those at Nilackal and Pampa, will cease to operate. The number of daily bookings will be limited to 80,000, with slots open for booking at least three months prior to the season.
Despite a similar limit on virtual queue bookings set in the previous season, a significantly higher number of people entered the hillock through the spot booking facility.
Estimates indicate that just over 50 lakh devotees visited the temple during the previous annual pilgrimage season that concluded in January this year. Throughout the season, the pilgrimage zone witnessed a heavy influx of devotees, leading to delays in clearing the backlog at the pilgrimage zone, affecting traffic along the roads as far as Kumily in Idukki and Kottayam.
Pilgrims, forced to spend hours in their vehicles, often resorted to protests, and some even turned back after offering darshan at the Valiya Koyikkal Sree Dharma Sastha Temple at Pandalam. At one point, the issue also took on a political dimension with Opposition parties cornering the State government over lapses in crowd management.
With the crowd proving difficult to manage, the police and the Pathanamathitta District administration urged the TDB to reduce the number of bookings in its virtual queue system during the Makaravilakku festival. The police also highlighted the risk involved in accommodating a crowd much beyond the temple’s capacity.
