About 2.38lakh pilgrims from different places across the country had darshan of Lord Venkateswara in the month of July, said Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) EO Anil Kumar Singhal. Speaking to media persons, after the monthly Dial your EO programme held at the Conference Hall in TTD Administrative Building in Tirupati, the EO disclosing the details said, though there was a dip in the number of footfalls to Tirumala due to increased cases across the country, from the past three days, the number of pilgrims picked up again.
On August 8, about 8500 odd pilgrims had darshan against the quota of 9000 tickets”, he observed.
He said, the Hundi collections stood at Rs.16.69cr while the e-Hundi at Rs.3.97cr during last month. “In Padmavathi temple also we commenced e-Hundi recently and so far Rs.8.15lakhs were received”, he added.
The EO said, TTD is contemplating SVBC to make Advertisement free upon the requests from pilgrim devotees across the world and commenced SVBC Trust as it requires Rs.3cr to Rs.4cr annually for maintenance of the channel. So far the Trust received 2.61cr in the last three weeks”. Adding further he said, after reviewing the financial prospects, we are planning to commence even the HD version of SVBC for better telecast of programmes”, he maintained.