The hill temple of Lord Venkateswara on Tuesday registered a meagre income of ₹39 lakh - the lowest ever during the current calendar year.
The income derived from the temple Hundi which registered a whopping ₹105 crore in the month of March fell to ₹62.62 crore in April recording an average of a little over ₹2 crore a day and with the slash in the darshan tickets further crashed to just a few lakhs a day since the beginning of May.
According to statistics the Hundi has recorded ₹46 lakh, ₹78 lakh, ₹55 lakh and ₹39 lakh so far, during the last four days of the month.
Officals fear that the 18-hour curfew imposed by the State government (to confront the steep increase in the number of positive COVID cases) from Wednesday is likely to further take a toll on the Hundi income which is the main source of income to TTD.
The promulgating of curfew will also have a telling impact in the turnout of pilgrim crowds which they say had already hit its nadir with just 4,723 pilgrims turning up on Tuesday in sharp contrast to 15,000 on line darshan tickets being made available to the public every day.
