Sabarimala: Sabarimala in Kerala continued to witness a massive influx of pilgrims on Thursday, with devotees waiting up to 12 hours for ‘darshan’ despite efforts to regulate entry.

Around 65 pilgrims were seen ascending the holy 18 steps every minute. The Travancore Devaswom Board has now capped daily darshan at 75,000 devotees, following High Court directions issued earlier this week.

Spot booking has been curtailed to 5,000 until Monday, and authorities have been instructed to strictly implement virtual queue booking to manage the surge.

On Tuesday, the first major rush of the Mandala-Makaravilakku season exposed significant shortcomings in crowd management and basic facilities.

More than one lakh pilgrims had arrived in the hill shrine, leading to long queues stretching across kil

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