Rath Yatra festival starts today, special rituals begin at Jagannathpur temple

RANCHI: The priests at Ranchi's Jagannathpur temple performed a special puja on Monday evening to formally mark the beginning of this year's Rath Yatra festivities.
"In keeping with the temple's nearly 300-year-old tradition, an hour-long puja was performed inside the temple's garva griha (sanctum sanctorum). The puja formally concluded with the Netra Dan of Lord Jagannath, Subhadra and Balram.Then the idols were brought out from the garva griha and placed at the outer section of the temple for the darshan of the devotees," Bhuvaneshwar Mohanty, the temple's priest, said.
The temple's managing trust said the yatra would begin at 2 pm on Tuesday. Chief minister Hemant Soren and Governor C P Radhakrishnan will be in attendance and pull the chariot, the trust said.
At the foot of the hills, thousands of businessmen raced against time to set up their makeshift shops which will be a part of the Jagannathpur fair for over a week. With monsoon setting in and dark clouds gathering over the cityscape, many had worried look on their faces.
The small-time businessmen, who traditionally keep coming here each year during the fair, are now being forced to shell out extra from their pockets to set up their shops in open spaces around the temple hill's foot.
"I have been coming here for 10 years now. Each year, we paid a token money of Rs 151 to the temple trust to set up our shops and do business. But this time, the rates have been revised. The trust is charging us Rs 2,000 for every foot of space that our shops occupy," Gulshan Kumar, a bangle and jewelry seller from Bihar Sharif, said.
Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, a member of the temple trust, said the fair's management has been reorganised this year.
"The temple trust earned Rs 5 lakh in revenue. Given the number of shops which are set up each year, the sum is paltry. Hence, the trust tendered out the management of the fair to a West Bengal-based agency through a bidding process. The highest bidder paid Rs 75 lakh," Mishra added.
The Ranchi administration on Monday said adequate security personnel will be deployed at the kilometer-long yatra route between Jagannathpur Temple and Mausi Bari.
"The sale and consumption of alcohol and non-vegetarian food have also been banned in and around the area for Tuesday," a local police official said.