‘Face’ Time With God: How Photo Tech Will Streamline Darshan at Tirupati Temple from Mar 1 | EXPLAINED

Starting March 1, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) will use facial recognition technology to streamline darshan for devotees at the Sri Venkateshwara Swamy Temple.

Touted as one of the richest temples in the world, the hill shrine sees a footfall of 65,000 active devotees on average, which also goes upto 80,000 during festivals.

An official statement from the TTD said the new tech will be used to prevent a person from procuring more tokens in SarvaDarshan Complex and also at the caution deposit refund counters.

SarvaDarshan refers to free darshan, and is the most sought-out option by thousands of pilgrims, who are allowed entry through a token system. Owing to heavy footfall, the timings for free darshan differ on a daily basis, subsequently other facilities, including accommodation and laddu prasad distribution, also become a challenge due to limited slots. TTD authorities believe the technology will help counter fraud and prevent people from falling prey to touts.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Pilgrims will be photographed at a designation entry point while registering for darshan in an offline mode.
2. The details of the person will be stored in TTD’s database managed by its IT wing.
3. As soon as the pilgrim enters the temple, they will be under the radar of over 3,000 cameras which will trace the person’s entry and exit.
4. The same method will be applicable to the prasad distribution counter where pilgrim’s tokens will be vetted by the facial recognition tech to ensure transparent assortment.
5. The accommodation will be provided only after a pilgrim’s biometric details match with the temple’s data base.

‘WILL SAVE TIME’

The pilot project will initially take off for Sarva Darshan pilgrims being routed through Vaikuntum 2 complex, which sees an average footfall of 30,000-35,000 devotees daily.

M Sandeep, from TTD’s IT wing, said automatic face recognition system will be a massive timesaver as it will eliminate the manual process of physically checking a pilgrim’s details through government id proofs such as Aadhaar.

“As the details of the pilgrims will be already stored in our database, it will eradicate any kind of malpractices. The system of sending SMS will be phased out. FRT will help us navigate every single pilgrim availing SarvaDarshan and help us rationalise accommodation, prasad disbursement and caution money refund system,” said Sandeep.

When questioned about privacy concerns and data storage, TTD maintained that a fool-proof strategy is in place to fortify their data base

“Ours is an intranet application which can be accessed only through TTD’s local data centre. The entire application is highly secure and there is no chance of any external party accessing our data, let alone misusing it,” said Sandeep.

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