As many as 550 women of childbearing age have registered online so far for entry to the Sabarimala temple when it opens for the pilgrimage season on November 16, at a time no woman in this age group has been allowed to step into the shrine by protesters.
Sources in the Travancore Devaswom Board, which runs the Lord Ayyappa temple in Kerala’s Sabarimala, said 3.5 lakh devotees had registered so far for the November-January pilgrimage season.
The women who have applied for entry are overwhelming from the southern states, which send the maximum number of devotes to the shrine.
A functionary of the temple governing body said the number of women indicated a “major challenge” for all stakeholders as Sangh parivar organisations and many puritans were against the implementation of the September 28 order of the Supreme Court lifting the ban on the entry of women of childbearing age to the Sabarimala temple.
“We know it is a major challenge and a huge task. But with the help of the state police we will ensure that everyone with proper bookings complete their pilgrimage,” said the official, who did not want to be named.
No woman of childbearing age has been allowed to enter the temple since the Supreme Court order, with protesters attacking women devotees and fighting pitched battles with police trying to enforce the directive.
Before the onset of the pilgrimage, the Supreme Court will hear review petitions against the judgment on November 13.
Pilgrims are required to observe a strict penance of 41 days during which they abstain from non-vegetarian food and liquor, maintain celibacy and stop shaving or getting a haircut before they enter the temple.
Pilgrims now need to enter their particulars in a digitised crowd-management system launched by Kerala police, which handle security at the Sabarimala temple. The website on which registration is done belongs to the Travancore Devaswom Board but is maintained by the police.
A similar system had been in place from 2011 to 2015, but it was not too effective. “A lot of pilgrims had visited the temple all those years without registering in the virtual queue,” the official said.
Around four crore pilgrims had visited the Sabarimala temple during the last pilgrimage season.
Devotees need to enter their personal details and preferred date of visit on sabarimalaq.com and also book bus tickets from the base camp at Nilakkal, which is 23km downhill from the temple.
“We hope to encourage devotees to register online since it gives them an assured date and time for entering the temple,” the official said, alluding to the failure of the previous queue system reintroduced this year. The online registration is not mandatory.
The crowd-management system is on the lines of the one at the Venkateswara temple at Tirumala in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh.
But unlike in Tirupati where pilgrims arrive each day, the Sabarimala temple, located inside a tiger reserve, is open only once every Malayalam month besides the two-month pilgrimage season set to begin in a week.
Asked about the security deployment considering the changed circumstances, the official said the final decision would be taken in the next few days.
“We are holding regular meetings with the police and every other department involved in making this an incident-free season,” he added.
When the temple last opened for less than 30 hours on November 5, more than 2,000 police personnel had kept a close watch on the devotees. But in spite of that, several untoward incidents were reported.