Vijayawada: Thousands of devotees visited Sri Durga Malleswara Swamy varla Devasthanam, the Durga temple on Saturday, the first day of the five days of Bhavani Deeksha Viramana. The devo-tees relinquished the Deekha after performing rituals at the temple.
Two homagundams were arranged for performing the rituals. The NTR district administra-tion has made elaborate arrangements for the five Day Deeksha Viramana from December 21 to 25. Bhavani Deeksha Viramana is one of the important programs organised by the Sri Durga temple and around five lakh devotees from AP, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will attend the temple every year.
NTR district collector G Lakshmisha, Temple EO KS Ramarao, Commissioner of police SV Ra-jasekhara Babu, VMC commissioner Dhyana Chandra and other officials inspected the ar-rangements.
Collector Lakshmisha visited the Command Control Room at the Model guest house and in-spected the CC TV footages and drones. He monitored the queue lines, bathing ghats, wait-ing halls, Anna prasadam distribution points and services of the temple staff.
He personally spoke to some devotees and enquired about the arrangements.
Briefing the media, collector said top priority was given for the safety of the devotees and children. He said QR code bands were given to the children to trace them in case of missing from their parents.
Commissioner of police, Vijayawada, SV Rajasekhara Babu said over 60,00 police personnel were drafted for the duty and 1900 CC cameras are arranged for the surveillance. Commis-sioner Rajasekhara Babu said the Bhavani Deeksha app is very useful to the devotees and they can get information on the traffic and services of the Durga temple.
He said the police are monitoring the traffic with the help of drones. VMC commissioner Dhyana Chandra said 150 makeshift toilets were arranged for the convenience of devotees and 10 lakh water bottles will be distributed to devotees during the five day Bhavani Deeksha Viramana. He said VMC, police, revenue and endowment departments are working in co-ordination for the successful conduct of Bhavani Deeksha Viraman from December 21 to 25.
