Tirupati Temple to Install Face Recognition Systems from 1 March 2023 for Darshans and Other Services

Tirupati Temple will use facial recognition technology to combat impersonation, misuse of services, crowd management, accommodation allotment, and more.

Written by: Arjita Gupta

Edited by: Krutarth Ghosalkar

Last Updated: March 01, 2023

The Lord Venkateswara temple, more popularly known as the Tirupati temple will install a facial recognition system at the entrance to manage the crowd of devotees and protect against misuse of temple service. The system is going to operate from Wednesday. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) announced the beginning of the service on their official website. The facial recognition system will ease tasks for authorities and bring more transparency to the allotment of accommodation and transparency.

From March 1 onward, the facial recognition technology will apply at AMS systems and Vaikuntham 2 on an experimental basis. It will assist with transparency in accommodation allotment systems, and tokenless darshan, and offer effective services to the pilgrims. It will also do away with impersonation. There have been instances at Sarva Darshan Complex where people take more tokens and then ask for a refund on a deposit not being made.

The facial recognition system may counter such incidents. Currently, the temple has a capacity of 7000 visitors and 1000 accommodations out of these are reserved for rest. The remaining is for regular visitors. The technology is going to be used for caution deposit refunds, laddu disbursal, tokenless darshans, sarva darshanam, accommodation allotment, and others.

D Narasimha Kishore, the temple's chief vigilance and security officer, informed that pilgrims will be photographed at the shrine entrance when they visit the temple. The photo of the visitor will be then matched with the data bank to restrict misuse of services and impersonation. So, after a pilgrim comes to the temple once and undergoes the facial recognition verification, the next time he visits, the data can identify the person.

The cross-checking of the pilgrim with facial recognition will happen in the following ways. The person will stand before the camera so that the photo is captured. The image will go to the data bank and he will be allowed in the temple once the photo is confirmed as the same on the ticket. Otherwise, it will attract impersonation penalties and charges.

Some of the other advantages of the facial recognition system are swift verification, ending impersonation, finding the trail of a missing person in the shrine, and others. The implementation of this technology will involve the surveillance of 3,000 cameras in the temple complex for the visitors of Tirumala