A landslide on the Tirumala ghat road on the night of Tuesday, November 30 caused temporary obstruction to vehicles. The road remained closed for repairs on Wednesday, December 1. With many vehicles of devotees en route to the Venkateswara temple stranded on the road, the TTD has been making alternative arrangements to remove the vehicles and to clear the road. Officials of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams’ (TTD) vigilance, engineering and forest wings arrived at the spot to oversee removal of the boulders from the road.
Many vehicles were stranded as traffic came to a standstill along the second ghat road near Alipiri. According to reports, the vehicles were eventually diverted slowly through alternative routes along the link road. With boulders falling onto the ghat road from the hills, the road was damaged at multiple places.
Tirumala recently witnessed unprecedented heavy rains on November 18, resulting in landslides on multiple places on the ghat roads. The TTD had already announced the closure of ghat roads for two days due to the rain forecast. After carrying out repair works, the ghat roads were reopened for vehicular traffic a few days later. TTD said that on the first ghat road, a barricade wall near the Akkagarla temple was damaged, causing boulders to fall onto the street in four places.
On the second ghat road, landslides earlier occurred in 13 places, with the retaining wall damaged in five places. TTD had said that it had suffered losses of over Rs 4 crore due to the recent heavy rains, which led to dams and check dams overflowing in the Seshachalam Hills through the Kapila Theertham falls, and caused flooding in Tirupati city as well. An atrium of the Kapila Theertham temple was also damaged in the rains, for which repairs were estimated to cost around Rs 70 lakh.