Palanpur: The world famous Ambaji temple will remain closed for common visitors from 1230 pm to 9pm tomorrow for the once in a year ‘Prakshalan’ (cleansing) ritual which is held on any of the first three days after Bhadarvi Poonam Mela.

Media Convener of the Shri Arasuri Ambaji Mata Devasthan Trust (SAAMDT), which looks after the affairs of the shrine, Ashish Raval today said that the Shree Yantra of the temple (there is no idol in the temple and the Shree Yantra is treated as the main idol of goddess Amba) is brought out of the sanctum sanctorum and the whole temple premises is cleaned thoroughly as Prakshalan ritual once every year after the Bhadaravi Poonam Mela.

‘Any one of the first three days is chosen by the main priest for the purpose and this year the prakshalan ritual will be held tomorrow. The local villagers and 40 to 50 members of a traditional Soni (goldsmith) family will clean the temple in traditional manner. It will be closed at 1230 in the afternoon and opened for evening aarti at 9 pm instead of normal 730 pm, ‘ Mr Raval said.

He said that this year during the Bhadarvi Poonam Mela held from September 10 to 16, a total of 31.34 lakh visitors visited the temple which was over 2 lakhs more than last year’s 28.92 lakhs.

He said that the cash donation during the fair this year was around Rs 2 crore 50 lakhs against Rs 2 crore 92 thousand of last year. The total cash income (including the proceeds from the sale of prasad) this year was 4 crore 77 lakhs in comparison to Rs 4 crore 22 lakhs of last year.

Mr Raval said that this year apart from the regular visitors around seven lakh from across India and abroad had virtual darshan of Goddess Amba through Webcast, FB, Youtube and other other social media platforms. This number was only around one lakh last year.

The temple situated in the lap of Aravalli mountain range in Banaskantha district on North Gujarat is the 51 st shakti peeth (power center) of mother goddess. From last year the temple management has started a cloud technology based state of the art footfall count system of visitors and also started webcast of darshan.

PTI