OBSERVING THAT “all available resources at Sabarimala have reached breaking point, and neither police nor the Devaswom Board is able to contain the inflow effectively”, Kerala High Court on Wednesday capped the number of pilgrims per day at 75,000.

The division bench of Justices Raja Vijayaraghavan and K V Jayakumar, in suo motu proceedings initiated on crowd management at Sabarimala, said that when pilgrim inflow exceeded one lakh, the density in parts of the temple crossed into the red zone (high risk crush zone), posing an unacceptable risk to public safety.

When this year’s annual pilgrim season began on November 16, the state police had fixed that 70,000 devotees could be allowed a day through virtual queue booking and another 20,000 through spot booking. However, in the past two da

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