Thiruvananthapuram:
Special arrangements will be made at Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in the wake of huge rush of devotees to the temple with the onset of Sabrimala season. The decision was taken here on Monday at a special meeting convened in the office of Devaswom Minister V S Sivakumar.
Around 300 additional police personnel would be deployed to control the crowd. The meeting also decided that the vehicles coming to the temple would be allowed to park on the Attukal Temple ground, World Market ground, Homeo College ground and at Injakal. The devotees would have to disembark at the street near the southern side of the temple. Special KSRTC buses will ply between the parking grounds and the temple to transport devotees.
Elaborate plans are also in place for providing drinking water and sanitation facilities to the devotees. An additional 23 water taps will be provided on the premises of Attukal temple while 10 more taps would be added on the Homeo College ground. And five more water tanks would also be readied for meeting the drinking water requirement. Also, 25 more mobile toilets will be added. The meeting decided to appoint 50 people to clean the temple and its premises on a contract basis.
Special control rooms will be set up to monitor the crowd and help the devotees. The meeting decided to implement all the plans within two days and hold a review meeting on Nov 24. The Minister said the State Govt would release additional funds to carry out the arrangements for Sabarimala devotees.
The meeting was attended by Mayor K Chandrika, V Sivankutty MLA, Additional Chief Secretary K Jayakumar, ADGP Venugopal K Nair, City Police Commissioner Manoj Abraham and others.