Thiruvananthapuram: A day before the Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala opens its doors for the Mandala-Makarvilakku pilgrimage season, the police on Sunday said extensive arrangements have been made to ensure the safety of devotees and a smooth 'darshan' for them.

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Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) P Vijayan, who is overseeing the arrangements of the force at Sabarimala, detailed the media about the measures in place.

"This year very strong arrangements have been made. We have given priority to four points -- firstly, ensuring security of the devotees, the shrine and those working at the temple; secondly, ensuring a comfortable pilgrimage; thirdly, traffic management and lastly, crowd management to prevent any stampede like incident," the ADGP said.

"For crowd control, we have deployed Superintendents of Police (SPs) with proven experience and a good track record," Vijayan added.

He said that if police personnel deployed on the 18 steps -- the ascension by the devotees before they reach the shrine -- pull up the devotees too quickly, it could create a situation where some may fall down and get injured.

The official advised devotees to strictly adhere to the queue system which has been put in place to ensure they can move forward one after the other in a smooth fashion.

"Instead of doing that, if they try to find some loophole to circumvent it and get in front, they are being unfair to the other devotees," he said.

The officer also said that police were installing artificial intelligence-based cameras at the temple to help with crowd management.

Besides that, police were analyzing devotee numbers from the previous five pilgrimage seasons to determine peak arrival times, he said, adding that another FASTag lane at Pamba for vehicles and issuing advance news bulletins informing pilgrims about days with higher or lower expected crowds so they can plan their travel accordingly, are also planned.

Additionally, two big sheds to accommodate around 6,000 pilgrims have been set up in order to regulate the movement of the devotees, the officer added.

The temple will open at 5 pm on Monday, with regular rituals beginning on the next day.

The shrine will close temporarily on December 27 night after the Mandala pooja and will reopen on December 30 for the Makaravilakku phase of the pilgrimage season.

The Makarajyothi will be lit on January 14, 2027 and the temple will close on January 20, marking the end of the two-month festival season.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Mathrubhumi and is published from a syndicated feed.)