Elaborate arrangements at Padmanabhaswamy Temple

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.Additional police personnel numbering around 300 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, Homoeo 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 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 Homoeo 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 around 50 staff to clean the temple and its premises on a contract basis. Special control rooms will be set up for monitoring purposes and to help the devotees. The meeting decided to implement all the plans within two days and to hold a review meeting on Nov 24. The Minister said that the State Govt would release more 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.