Raman Singh , Punjab Governor Shivraj Patil and AP Governor ESL Narasimhan and a half a dozen union and state ministers had several darshan over the intervening 12 hours of Thursday night and Friday morning and blocked the common darshan at Temple of Venkateswara for over 5 hours thereby denying darshan for nearly 55 ,000 devotees . News of VVIP break darshans had led to wide protests from common devotees aired by local news channels.
TTD sources say that all them had repeated darshans -Raman Singh had three darshans, ESL Narasimhan and Shivraj Patil had two darshan . All participated in the Friday's auspicious abhishekam for which common devotees have to wait for years to make booking. Narasimhan is popular in Tirumala as devotee No-1 as he is regular visitor on alternative Fridays and Saturdays. It is said that Raman Singh was advised to seek darshan of Lord Venkateswara to revive his fortunes and hence had come along with family and friends to Tirumala on Thursday night .
The TTD officials were under heavy pressure on Friday with almost 75,000 devotees waiting for hours for darshan of Lord Venkateswara . They had to extend the VIP darshan break in the morning to facilitate the VVIPS for a maximum of 3-1-2 hours to facilitate all of them. There has been a mad rush to the Tirumala during the week in view of the last days of the summer holidays and school reopening from Monday . During the entire week the TTD officials were under extreme pressure as devotees came in large numbers by walk and also by transports. 'As of Saturday morning we have nearly 85,000 in queue lines for darshan and hope to satisfy all by Sunday afternoon ' said a senior TTD official.