On Sunday, public interest lawyer Prashant Bhushan shared a post on Twitter that claimed that even as India continued to fight COVID-19, devotees were thronging to Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati Temple.
It is unclear as to who actually wrote the post shared by Bhushan, as there is a name added to the bottom of the image. "Yesterday, 5000 people prayed at the Tirupati Temple. 150 members of Temple staff, including 35% of Priests, tested positive last week. The entire town of Tirupati has been declared a CONTAINMENT ZONE. Yet, the Temple is allowed to stay open, for thousands of people to visit and offer prayers everyday," it read.
The post also added that yesterday "15 people were arrested in Gujarat & 22 in UP for offering Namaaz at their local Mosque. The cleric of UP mosque was allegedly beaten by the Police".
"Such blatant DISCRIMINATION is destroying the basic moral foundations of our NATION," adds the post that bears the name and email address of one Kabir Singh.
Bhushan Shared this, wondering why "none of the Lapdog news are now screaming Corona Jihad about Tirupati".
It is unclear as to who wrote the post, or when it was created. And while there does not seem to be any readily available information on exactly how many people have visited the temple recently, what we do know is that earlier in July around 140 employees of the Tirumala Tirupati Balaji temple had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. This included 14 priests.
The Tirumala temple had reopened for pilgrims on June 8 after remaining closed for 80 days due to COVID-induced lockdown. While initially, the temple was allowing only 6,000 pilgrims per day with strict adherence to COVID-19 protocol, the number was later doubled.
According to an IANS report from July 18, police officials had also suggested that the temple be closed. "In the interest of public health safety, the 'darshan' needs to be closed as it doesn't come under the emergency department (activities)," a senior police official wrote to Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), which manages the affairs of the world's richest temple atop Tirumala hill.
More recently, the temple town was put under a lockdown. A recent article by The Hindu, however notes that the footfall has been steadily dropping since then.
(with inputs from agencies)
