Deoghar, July 29, 2013: Serpentine queues, coupled with large-scale mismanagement, turned the auspicious occasion of Somvari into a nightmare for over 1.5 lakh pilgrims who had gathered at the Lord Baidyanath temple today.

If a 7km-long line of pilgrims, that extended up to Nandan Pahar, wasn’t bad enough, the district administration’s efforts to set up basic amenities along the route proved woefully inadequate.

Overhead sheds were too far and drinking water was also in short supply. The result was intermittent scuffles between angry devotees and volunteers.

According to a rough estimates, around 1.5 lakh pilgrims including 15,000 dak kanwarias— those who walk the entire 100 km stretch between Sultanganj and Deoghar — had reached Deoghar by the evening.

But more than 50,000 could not offer holy water they had collected from Uttarwahini (north flowing) Ganga as is customary on the Shivling. From this year, the temple management had reworked the system of arghya, or offerings.

Pilgrims weren’t allowed to enter the sanctum sanctorum. Instead, they were to pour their offerings into a huge vessel that channels the water onto the deity.

Obviously, this hasn’t gone down well with devotees. Many did not bother waiting for their turn to reach the vessel. They simply poured the Ganga jal they were carrying onto the temple gates.

Like Tribhuwan Sharma of Balia (UP).

“I was exhausted after walking three days from Sultanganj and was, therefore, not able to wait for another five or six hours for my turn to enter the temple,” he explained.

Kanti Mishra, a local priest, feared that henceforth, the new system would dissuade devotees from making the annual pilgrimage to Deoghar.

“Baidyanath Dham is referred to as ‘kamna linga’ and ‘sparsh puja’ (touching the deity) is mandatory. But administrative highhandedness has only hurt religious sentiments of pilgrims who travel huge distances to reach here,” he explained.

The opening week of Shravani Mela hasn’t gone off well. The temple board’s grand plans of switching over to bar-coded wristbands to allot specific time slots to devotees hasn’t worked.

Because of technical glitches and lack of planning and awareness, the system hasn’t been able to streamline the movement of pilgrims, leading to stampede-like situations on the route at various points, particularly Barmasia and Tiwari Chowk.

This led chief minister Hemant Soren to ask the temple authorities to revert to the age-old queue system.

Source: The Telegraph, DT. July 29, 2013.