Apr 21, 2008 11:40 PM
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(Updated Apr 21, 2008 11:43 PM)
Lord Balaji or Venkateswara is heading for the distinction to become the richest Lord in the world. The statistics of the collection is mindboggling from various sources:
Hair tonsuring: Rs 324 crores
Budgetary Provisions: Rs1925 crores
The range of fund raising activity by the TTD, the trust which manages the Lord Balaji temple, is amazing. There are lot of schemes designed to attract collections such as, e-seva, e-hundi, e-donation and e-sales. The physical donation of funds, jewellery which are unheralded and virtually anonymous. They contribute a major chunk of the collections.
Computerisation of entry into the temple will give us the actual statistics of the exact no of people visiting the temple for dharshan. It is estimated on an average 50, 000 people visit the temple, which mean 1.82 crores visit Lord Venkateswara. The crowd inflow is increasing year by year. No other destination in world may even come close to attracting such huge crowd including the Vatican.
The logistics of managing such huge inflow is tremendous, luckily majority of the people visiting Tirumala do not stay put, they prefer to have dharshan and get back to their native places.
The 4 lane of NH 4 is underway, which make travel by road faster and safer to Tirupathi from both Chennai as well as Blore. The accommodation facility needs to be improved in Tirupathi and Tirumala to a large extent considering the influx of tourists. There is a airport near Kalahasti which caters to rich and famous, it needs to be expanded to cater to direct flights from abroad too.
Looking ahead Lord Balaji will emerge as the biggest tourist attraction considering the religious importance and plus the adventure of trekking 12 kms up the hill, which is neatly laid out. For nature and historical addicts there are added attraction of historical palace @ chandragiri and gardens in and around tirupathi. I hope tirumala enters the Guinness book of records one day.
