Oneness Temple Consecration Function Called Off

Wanted to get this information across to all of you'll eagerly waiting to hear about the Incidents at Golden City.

Expected crowd was max 200,000 per day, but an estimated 880000 people were at the venue and by early afternoon message was given to postpone the darshan until further notice keeping in mind the safety of the devotees.

This information is from devotees who attended.

Consequence of the unexpected crowd:

The roads are all blocked for kms together, people and vehicles have filled space of upto 100 villages nearby

Temple doors and other structures were damaged by crowd.

One family who were fortunate to get Darshan by 11:00 am, it took them till 5:00 pm to come out of temple premises.

To my knowledge 22,23 was not reserved for any section of India so this kind of crowd on first day meant much more could arrive on later days.

Everyone is strongly adviced to cancel their trips till further information reaches them.

The event was too much of a success to handle.


News source :-
Nellore, April 22: At least three persons including a Sri Lankan national were killed and dozens injured in a stampede at the inauguration of godman Kalki Bhagwan’s Oneness University at Varadayapalem in Chittoor district on Tuesday. A scramble for water among thirsty devotees led to the incident during a function to which over 1 lakh people had congregated.

People injured in the stampede blamed the organisers of the event for failing to make proper arrangements to accommodate the huge crowd. The week-long inaugural, for which invitations with schedules were sent to devotees all over the country, was expected to attract several lakhs of people.
A forest range officer, Srinivasa Rao, 48, of Jangareddygudem in West Godavari district, Govindaiah, 63, of Vijayanagaram, and Subramanyam Satirlingam, 58, from Jaffna in Sri Lanka, were killed in the stampede. Several people were seriously injured and have been admitted at the government hospital at Tada.

Eyewitnesses said there was complete chaos at the ashram run by Kalki Bhagwan alias V. Vijayakumar and his wife Bhagvati Amma alias V. Padmavati, after the massive throng of devotees who had turned up for a darshan of the couple broke a long queue and tried to find their way out. The devotees, who were made to wait for hours without water in stifling heat, panicked when they could not find any exit, leading to a melee in the temple garden near the university.

“They invited us to our deaths,” said Mr Himagiri Babu, the son of one of the injured, Mr Eswar Rao.
“The devotees reached the Oneness University at around 8 am and were made to stand in a queue till 1 pm,” Mr Babu told this correspondent. “We tried to get out of the place but could not find out way out. The volunteers and security personnel did not bother to help us.” They said VIPs were given darshan immediately. Other devotees waited for a long time only to be told, at around 1 pm, that the Kalki Bhagwan and Bhagvati Amma had stopped giving darshan. The Chittoor SP, Mr K. Lakshmi Reddy, said several devotees suffered sunstroke because the ashram management did not supply drinking water to them.

“The ashram was asked to ensure that water was supplied to the devotees,” Mr Reddy said. “They reneged on their promise to have 3,000 volunteers supplying water sachets.” The Chittoor collector, Mr M. Ravichandra, who said the Kalki ashram had been advised to avoid hosting a large number of devotees, directed the tahsildar of the area to the site of the incident to provide help to the injured.

The Varadayapalem inspector, Mr Venkata Narayana, ruled out the possibility of more casualties and said the situation is under control. The police has stopped all buses from entering the ashram and the ashram authorities have decided to cut the inaugural to a one-day event. Vijayakumar, a former LIC clerk who proclaimed himself to be Kalki Bhagwan or the tenth avatar of Vishnu, has ashrams and properties spread across the state and in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. He ordained his wife Padmavati as the goddess Bhagvati Amma.