BHUBANESWAR: Old Station Bazaar Durga Puja Samiti is all geared up to make the celebrations grand and also unique, as they have planned to incur the expenses of the stay of the visitors arriving from different districts of the State.
“We will soon share the mail ID of the samiti and people from other districts interested to witness the Puja at Old Station Bazaar can inform us. At least five rooms each in about 10 hotels of the area will be booked for them,” said samiti’s president, Ganesh Prasad Sahoo.
Also, this year their pandal gate will be a replica of Varanasi’s Ganga Ghat, having a width and height of 130 ft and 35 ft respectively. In an attempt to make the ghat’s representation distinct, the width of the gate has been increased by about 50 ft than its usual size in the previous years .
The samiti’s members said earlier the pandal’s gate height and width used to be 90 ft and 80 ft respectively. “But this year the gate’s design is in the line of Varanasi’s Ganga Ghat and we want the visitors to have a clear view of the entire structure for which the width has been increased,” Sahoo said.
The height of the silver medha will be 17 ft height and the idol 12 ft tall. The idol will be decorated with a gold crown weighing about 750 gram. The samiti members said that the medha and other silver ornaments will weigh about 2.10 quintal.
The visitors can also have a glimpses of the stories of Vikram and Betal through a number of statues installed inside the Puja pandal. Apart from that melody has been planned between Saptami and Dashami.
Old Station Bazaar Durga Puja Samiti has made adequate arrangements like wheelchairs for senior citizens and differently-abled persons, who will be visiting the pandal during the five-day festival.
As many as 250 volunteers will be deployed near the pandal to ensure the festival passes off smoothly. Moreover, at least 50 CCTV cameras will also be installed to keep a vigil on the anti-social elements.