TDB President Prayar Gopalakrishnan informed that The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) is making serious efforts to raise the grade of Sabarimala as an international pilgrim centre in collaboration with numerous other states in Southern India.
He further informed that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy is going to summon a formal meeting of the Chief Ministers of all states in southern region of the country, Pampa Sangamom, in the month of January as part of this aspiring enterprise. Efforts will also being made that the Prime Minister also becomes a part of this event.
Gopalakrishnan added that Sabarimala mainly received its major share of devotees from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. Thus, it is extremely important that these four states play a major role in the development of Sabarimala.
TDB has plans of allocating an area of 5 acres to all the south Indian states so that they can set up their own pilgrim facilitation centres at Nilackal, the base camp.
On December 4, a high-level meeting would be organized in Thiruvananthapuram by the Principal Secretary to the government for taking a decision regarding the same.
Six queue complex
The TDB President informed that 6 new self-sufficient queue complexes that were made on the Saramkuthy path are going to be of much help as far as managing the crowd in a pilgrim-friendly way when the pilgrim season will be on its peak. This complex has 18 halls wherein each hall can easily accommodate 200 people. There is going to be periodic release of the pilgrims from 1 compartment to the other so that their movement on the trek route can be managed properly.
Gopalakrishnan further added that clean toilets, snack stalls, medicated drinking water kiosk, TV shows running temple-related shows will be provided in all the halls.
Pilgrim tourism
The TDB chief informed that TDB is also going to look out on the chances of organizing pilgrimage trips, in link up with the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, to popular religious sites such as Pandalam Palace, Ayyappa temples at Kulathooppuzha, Aryankavu, Achenkovil and Erumeli. He added that efforts for the revival of Thiru Kalyanam at the Aryanakavu Sastha temple in link with Tamil Nadu government are also going on.