Tirumala: Online special darshan gains popularity
Money will be refunded after booking if pilgrims fail to reach the temple
Tirumala: Online issue of Rs 300 special darshan facility has been gaining popularity. Many devotees are opting for this kind of darshan as it provides good and hassle-free darshan so much so, that TTD is calling it Sheeghra Darshan (fast darshan). This system is also receiving many compliments from all sections of people in the society.
This online ticket booking system of special darshan is convenient for devotees who come from far off places for the darshan of Lord Venkateswara, in the hill shrine of Tirumala.
TTD had introduced this system on September 21, 2009 to provide quick darshan to the pilgrims. Online booking was introduced on August 27, 2014. The devotees can book their darshan tickets through www.ttdsevaonline.com website.
TTD made these tickets available in post offices from January 15, 2015 and extended this to 95 post offices in the beginning. Now all the post offices including mandal-level post offices sell the tickets. TTD encompassed mandal post offices to ensure availability of special darshan tickets even for rural people.
After many efforts to streamline issue of special darshan tickets, the TTD EO Sambasiva Rao, JEO (Tirumala) Sreenivasa Raju and other senior officials decided to increase the tickets from 10,000 to 26,000 while the Rs 50 tickets decreased from 10,000 to 4,000 to enable more number of devotees to have a pre-planned darshan.
A team of devotees comprising 150 members led by Shantilal Jain from Ujjain of Madhya Pradesh had a comfortable darshan in a couple of hours on July 17 and they expressed their immense satisfaction with this format of darshan. "Without any trouble we had a very smooth darshan and we are all happy," he said.
After many amendments, now the owner of the family alone has to upload his or her photo ID and other particulars and only ID numbers of other members of the family should be entered. Money would be refunded after booking if they failed to come for the darshan. Extra laddus can also be booked online while booking the tickets.