February 27, 2014: The premises of the famous Lord Shiva temple of Sri Kapileswara Swamy in the temple city of Tirupati reverberated with the devotees chanting”Hara Hara Mahadeva – Sambho Shankara” and witnessed a huge turnout of pilgrims on Thursday in connection with the festive occasion of Maha Sivarathri.

The religious activity began with Suprabhatam followed by Mahanyasapurvaka Ekadasa Rudrabhishekam in the wee hours of Thursday.

The Sarva Darshan to pilgrims began at 5.30am and will continue till 11pm. The procession of “Bhogi Teru” took place between 7am to 9am in the spacious streets of Temple premises. While the favourite vehicle of Lord Shiva, Nandi Vahanam took place in the evening between 6pm to 10pm.

On the other hand the women devotees lit the lamps made out of flour in front of Nagaras(stone idols of sepent kings) located adjacent to Lord Kapileswara Swamy after darshan of the presiding deity.

Meanwhile TTD has made elaborate arrangements to see that no untoward incident take place due to heavy influx of pilgrims. Annaprasadam have also been distributed to the visiting pilgrims. Apart from the TTD Vigilance and Security, police, Srivari Seva volunteers are also pressed into the service to maintain the pilgrim queue lines in a systematic way.

Tirupati JEO Sri Pola Bhaskar personally inspected the arrangements and instructed the concerned officials at regular intervals the entire day. CVSO Sri G Srinivasa Rao, Deputy EOs Sri Balaji, Sri Chandrasekhara Pillai also inspected the arrangements made to the pilgrims.