Sabarimala down to 5,000 Aravana tins amid pilgrim rush

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Appam and Aravana counter at Sabarimala (file) | Photo Credit: H. VIBHU

With just hours left for the ongoing monthly pilgrimage window to close, the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala is facing an acute Aravana shortage, with just over 5,000 tins of the offering in stock.

Around 17,000 devotees are expected at the temple before it closes at 10 pm on Monday. As many as 15,000 devotees have booked darshan online, while spot bookings are expected to push the total footfall beyond 17,000.

Taking note of the shortage, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has already restricted Aravana sales to one tin per devotee, triggering protests among pilgrims over the past couple of days.

The Aravana production plant at Sannidhanam remained shut for maintenance just ahead of the opening of the hill shrine for the five day monthly puja on September 16. The board, however, failed to build adequate stocks of the offering before taking up the work, aggravating the shortage.

On Sunday too, pilgrims were given only three packets of Appam and one tin of Aravana each. The shortage triggered protests, with pilgrims waiting in queues for hours to get a single tin. The police had to intervene at times to pacify agitated devotees.

The crisis comes just weeks ahead of the annual Mandalam Makaravilakku pilgrimage season, which is scheduled to begin on November 16. As part of preparations, work is now under way to increase the daily production capacity of the Aravana plant by around one lakh tins.

The expansion is expected to raise the plant’s daily capacity to around 3.25 lakh tins, TDB officials said. The plant currently has 26 preparation pans, six cooling chambers and six boilers, with a daily production capacity of 2 lakh to 2.25 lakh tins.

The TDB, meanwhile, attributed the current shortage also to a sharp rise in pilgrim footfall, particularly from other states, during the monthly puja.

“It’s a fact that the board rushed into the renovation of the Aravana plant as it cannot afford to face another shortage during the annual pilgrimage season. At the same time, we did not expect such a high number of pilgrims during this monthly puja and had planned our buffer stock based on the trends of previous years,” an official said.

During the last pilgrimage season, the TDB had to restrict Aravana sales to 10 tins per devotee after demand exceeded the plant’s production capacity.

The ongoing renovation is expected to take around 40 days. The board expects to resume production by the second week of October and build a buffer stock of more than 50 lakh tins before the annual pilgrimage season begins.

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