July 6, 2013: Like Puri, the annual sojourn of Lord Jagannath, His kin Balabhadra and Subhadra is a crowd-puller in the Twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Thousands of people turn out on the streets of the Capital City and Cuttack to witness the grand of the Trinity.

At Bhubaneswar, the Car Festival is organised at 35 places in the city, but the one organised by Iskcon draws the maximum crowd. Yatras at Patia, Kolathia, Siripur and Tamando also are crowd pullers.

At Iskcon temple, the deities will be taken out in a procession to the Gundicha temple in Unit-VIII. The three chariots will be stationed near the Gundicha temple for public viewing. Since the temple is right on the National Highway (NH), the chariots will take the NH till CRPF Chowk to reach the destination. During this time, traffic will be diverted at places for around an hour for smooth running of the chariots.

“We expect over one lakh people to gather and take part in the celebration. We will take all possible steps to ensure that devotees have no trouble having darshan,” said a senior police officer, adding that over 10 platoons of police would be on duty.

At Siripur, all approach roads to the Jagannath temple will be blocked from various points and devotees will only be allowed to walk. After 2 pm, the rath route will be closed to vehicular traffic,” said the officer.

Officials of the Traffic police station, Bhubaneswar, said this time, six control rooms will be opened to keep tab on all the activities and monitoring of Rath Yatra crowd. These will be set up in places like Baramunda, Kalpana Square, Samantrapur and Laxmisagar Chowk. Besides, police patrolling will be conducted throughout the day both on Rath Yatra and Bahuda Yatra.

Sources said nodal officers of various departments have been asked to be present near the venues on the day. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been asked to take care of sanitation around the temples, while the roads and buildings department is carrying out repair of roads on the Rath Yatra routes. The Public Health Engineering Organisation will take care of water requirements while the fire services would also be prepared to tackle any untoward incident. NGOs will sprinkle water on the devotees and attend to the sick.

At Cuttack too, a large number of devotees take part in the pulling of the chariots at Dolamundai and Chandni Chowk where the festival is celebrated in a grand manner.

According to secretary of Chandni Chowk Rath Yatra Management Committee Bhikari Das, Chandni Chowk Jagannath temple was established in 1996 and since 2000, Rath Yatra has been celebrated with much enthusiasm. All the chariots of the three deities are pulled through Astashambu Square, Trinath temple, Mangalasahi Chowk, Kafla Phandi Chowk and Sati Choura Chowk to the Gundicha temple. This year although the Gundicha temple has been demolished, Jagannath temple administration committee has decided to set up a temporary structure there for the Trinity’s sojourn.

At Dolamundai, elaborate security arrangements will be made for the festival. Apart from this, special arrangements will be made for vehicular movements keeping in view the rush of devotees on the occasion. Chandni Chowk and Dolamundai will be declared ‘no-vehicle zones’ and vehicular movement on Haripur and Pithapur roads converging at Dolamundai would also be regulated after 12 pm on the day.

Source: The New Indian Express, DT. July 6, 2013.