Every year for 10 days, Karthigal Deepam festival takes place at the highly popular Tiruvannamalai temple is known to us. Now, rains have made its presence felt here and despite this the preparations for the 10 day festival have been going on well now.
Recently, painting on small peedams( that would have 63 Nayanmars) got completed and now painting is being done on Brahma Vahanam. This Brahma Vahanam would be used for taking procession along the 4 mada streets on the 7th day. A day before, a procession of Nayanmmars would be taken out. On Tuesday, Mr. Sekar Babu, minister for HR & CE reviewed the ongoing works.
Mr.B. Murugesh, collector of Thiruvannamalai district spoke about how this year there would be superb facilities of high standards available for the devotees when compared to the previous years.
He added that around 5lakh devotees would be present on 3rd December for Maha Ratham procession and about 25lakhs devotees on 6th December to witness Barani and Maha deepams.
Various facilities that would be available for the devotees would be 13 bus stands on 9 approach roads, 59 car parking lots to handle 12400 cars, 2692 special buses to make 6431 trips to the temple town etc. There would also be another 100 buses including 80 school buses to be plied as shuttle services between bus stand and girivalam path. Information is that autos carrying the devotees would charge Rs 30 per person for the first 2.5kms and Rs 50 beyond this limit.
At the selected locations, as many as 15108 ambulances would be present for the emergency healthcare requirements. There would also be 10 bike ambulances and 15 medical stations on the girivalam path. For this important festival at Tiruvannamalai, 12100 police personnel would be doing their duty and there would be 26 fire services tenders etc also.
Point to be noted is that nearly 150 Forest Dept staff would be monitoring 23 vulnerable paths of the devotees and 169 CCTV cameras would be keeping a close eye on the devotees inside the temple. Throughout the festival days, as many as 35 assistance booths would be functioning for the devotees.
It is learnt that 15 executive magistrates would be appointed for the festival and 4 control rooms would function at the Collectorate, district police office,RTO and fire services offices etc. There would also be 110 rest stations that would be set up for the police personnel and 19 rest stations for fire service personnel.
