Anti-Telangana strike does not spare Tirumala Lord

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Tirupati: The first day of NGO’s strike, which commenced on Tuesday, hit the devotees of Lord Venkateswara as the RTC was forced to suspend the  services to Tirumala from Tirupati due to lack of cooperation from the workers.
Sources say that this is the first time buses services have been brought to a halt during last four decades.
It is a practice for bandh organisers, whoever they are, to exempt bus services to Tirumala because of reverence to the Lord of Seven Hills as pilgrims from all parts of the country and even other countries come to the temple city every day.
The RTC operates about 1200 trips between Tirumala and Tirupati carrying about 50,000 pilgrims every day. All the services came to a grinding halt from Monday midnight in view of strike as well as bandh.
To mitigate the sufferings of pilgrims, the TTD has convinced the jeep operators, who usually exploit the devotees in this kind of situations, to collect only Rs 60 per pilgrim for  dropping them at Tirumala.
On the flip side, pilgrims who could reach Tirumala and those stranded in the holy hills could have free darshan of the Lord in under two hours. According to TTD sources, 19,500 pilgrims reached Tirumala by Tuesday evening.