Here I was, fuming about the finger-printing of Indian wannabe US-bounds for visa purposes. And I heard this story about finger-printing of individuals wanting to book for a darshan at the Tirupati temple.
To begin at the beginning, it is now possible to advance-book your darshan at the Tirupati temple and my sister-in-law who is visiting India in July wished to make such a ‘reservation’. When my mother-in-law approached the authorities at the booking office, she was told that booking could be done only by the individuals who were actually going for the darshan and that finger-prints which were scanned and stored on the computer would be checked at the time of entry into the temple.
This is apparently because there are lots of black-market bookings going on in the name of the Tirumala temple and such advance booking only makes it worse… To prevent misuse of such facilities, my mother-in-law was told…. What next?!.…
I remember the time when Siddhi Vinayak was first available on the internet, a few years ago…. And I thought that was hi-tech…
I have not read anything about this Tirupati thingy so far…. But if you had any experience, please do share it here….( As I write this, I found this article on the net about biometrics technology… Apparently this finger-printing business has been on for some years now…?)