Political Diary

The world famous Venkateswara temple witnessed low turnout of pilgrims since Y S Rajashekara Reddy’s death. For the last few days including weekends, there had been a big respite, with only few compartments witnessing huge rush at the Vaikuntam queue complex. While on last Saturday and Sunday when heavy pilgrim rush is generally seen, it registered very less amount of people and took three hours for the general pilgrims to have darshan of Lord Venkateswara Swamy, according to temple sources. Correspondingly, the occupancy rate in the APSRTC buses bound for Tirumala was also low compare to weekend rush. However, it is the first time in the history of the temple that the weekend witnessed a fall in the pilgrims rush to Tirumala, sources said. The temple hundi collection was also affected due to fall in the pilgrim rush. The Congress leaders, who were in the state at mourning mood, stayed away from visiting Tirumala temple and also received very low number of recommendation letters from the State Ministers, Congress MLAs and also from other states, the sources added.