Published Aug 02, 2026 | 8:01 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 02, 2026 | 8:01 PM
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and Cabinet Ministers offering prayers at Ujjaini Mahankali Temple in Secunderabad.
Synopsis: Despite the arrangements, long queues formed outside the temple well before sunrise, as devotees in traditional attire carrying decorated bonam pots waited for hours in humid weather.
Secunderabad came alive for Lashkar Bonalu at the Sri Ujjaini Mahankali Temple on Sunday, 2 August, with devotees streaming in from before dawn to offer prayers and traditional “bonam” (ceremonial meal in decorative pots).
The three-day festival, running from 2 to 4 August, is one of the most prominent legs of Telangana’s Bonalu season.
The Bonalu festival in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad spans four Sundays of the Telugu calendar’s Ashadam month. The major sites of worship are Goddess Jagadambika at the Golconda Fort in the first week, followed by Balkampet Yellamma, Secunderabad Ujjaini Mahankali, and Lal Darwaza Mahankali in the consecutive weeks.
The three-day festival at Ujjaini Mahankali Temple is popularly called the Lashkar Bonalu, derived from the Urdu/Persian word for army or military, because of the temple’s origins in Secunderabad’s old cantonment area. The season will close on 9 August with festivities at the Mahankali Temple in Lal Darwaza in the Old City, alongside dozens of neighbourhood Shakti temples across the twin cities.
Darshan began at 4 am on Sunday at the Ujjaini Mahankali temple, and authorities set up six queue lines. Two lines were dedicated for women carrying bonam offerings, two were general lines, and two were reserved for VIPs.
Telangana Minister for Transport and BC Welfare Ponnam Prabhakar and his wife Manjula offered the first bonam on behalf of the state government in the early hours. The Rangam ritual, in which an oracle delivers predictions for the coming year, along with the Gajavahana Seva elephant procession, is scheduled for Monday, 3 August.
Also Read: When Bonalu brought Secunderabad to life
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy visited the temple in the afternoon and offered silk robes (pattu vastralu) to the Goddess and offered special prayers. He was accompanied by Endowments Minister Konda Surekha and ministers Seethakka and Ponnam Prabhakar, along with other MLAs and MLCs. Sanathnagar MLA Talasani Srinivas Yadav welcomed him, and temple priests offered blessings.
BRS working president KT Rama Rao also visited the temple and offered prayers at the shrine.
Speaking to the media outside the temple, KTR recalled that the previous BRS government had declared Bonalu as one of the state’s official festivals immediately after Telangana was formed, after years of public demands during the united Andhra Pradesh state were ignored.
Also Read: Festivities galore as Bonalu takes over the City of Pearls
Hyderabad Police deployed 2,500 personnel drawn from law and order units, She Teams and the Task Force, backed by an AI-enabled Crowd Management System installed for the first time at the Mahankali Police Station.
Hyderabad Commissioner of Police VC Sajjanar reviewed the security arrangements. Ten plainclothes crime detection teams have been on watch since 31 July to flag suspicious activity.
Traffic curbs covering a roughly two-kilometre radius took effect from midnight on 1 August and are expected to be lifted in the early hours of 4 August. Heavy congestion was reported on Sunday around Karbala Maidan, Patny X Roads, SBI X Roads, YMCA X Roads and Rasoolpura.
TGSRTC ran around 175 special buses linking MGBS, Charminar, Mehdipatnam, Alwal and Kushaiguda to Secunderabad to ease the crowd. The Health Department set up water kiosks, health camps and ambulances along the route.
Despite the arrangements, long queues formed outside the temple well before sunrise, as devotees in traditional attire carrying decorated bonam waited for hours in humid weather.
The heavy VIP presence on the day, including the chief minister’s entourage of ministers and legislators and KTR’s separate visit, added to the pressure on crowd management teams.
This is a recurring complaint at the Lashkar Bonalu, and officials maintained that this year’s expanded queue system and crowd management were designed specifically to prevent such disruptions.
However, the scale of traffic on a day already drawing lakhs of devotees continued to challenge those claims, as it had in past festivals. A stampede-like situation ensued, causing a woman devotee to trip and fall, leading to commotion at the temple premises.
The 1 to 3 pm slot was reserved for Shivashaktis and Joginis, who are an important part of the state’s regional festival rituals, to offer prayers at the sanctum. But according to them, the government had not kept up its promise.
Jogini Shyamala, a prominent activist and regular presence at Lashkar Bonalu, fainted while on her way to the sanctum, falling to the ground along with the bonam pot she was carrying. Shyamala, along with other Joginis and Shivashaktis, criticised the state government’s alleged poor planning.
“We have always been identified as a union of Shiva and Shakti and respected by the governments so far. We were invited for so many meetings with the police personnel and were asked to coordinate during the Secunderabad Bonalu. But only the VIPs and politicians are being prioritised,” Shyamala told the media.
“We have always cooperated with the government. But what they have done today is shameful. This will not do any good to the state,” she added.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
