Taking a serious note of the crowd flow to Sabarimala in the previous season, which stretched the pilgrim management protocol in the holy hillock to its limit, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) is implementing measures to regulate the rush from the next season onwards.
Officials say only those who have booked their spots for darshan through the virtual queue system will be permitted to trek up the hillock, while all spot booking facilities, including those at Nilackal and Pampa, will cease to operate. The number of daily bookings will be limited to 80,000, with slots open for booking at least three months prior to the season.
Despite a similar limit on virtual queue bookings set in the previous season, a significantly higher number of people entered the hillock through the spot booking facility.
