PURI: The Sri Jagannath temple will be accessible to all from January 21 with the district administration on Sunday deciding to withdraw the mandatory production of COVID negative certificate as a precondition for entry into the 12th century shrine.
Addressing mediapersons, chief administrator of Sri Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) Krishan Kumar said arrangements were being made to facilitate darshan for 30,000 devotees every day.
Devotees of Puri would be allowed for one hour from 6 am to 7 am every morning while darshan schedule for others will be in three sessions - 7 am to 12 noon, 2.30 pm to 4 pm and 4.40 pm till closure of the temple gates for the day. Darshan would not be allowed on Sundays.
Puri Collector Samarth Verma, SP K Vishal Singh, chief district medical officer Dr Sujata Mishra, sub-collector Bhabataran Sahu and servitors of the temple managing committee participated in the meeting.
There was a lot of hue and cry over production of COVID negative certificate at the temple gates as every day, a large number of devotees had to return dejected after failing to get the test report.
The administration had announced to facilitate entry of 17,000 devotees into the temple daily.
However, average entry was below 3,000 due to the mandatory provision of producing Covid negative certificate. Devotees had reacted strongly against the administration’s move stating that before making Covid negative certificate mandatory, it should have opened adequate testing facilities.
Besides, with the Lingaraj temple at Bhubaneswar doing away with the test report production system, pressure had mounted on the administration here to follow suit.
Closed since March 20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Srimandir opened its doors for devotees from December 23.
On the first three days, families of servitors were allowed entry while Puri residents had darshan from December 26 to 31 without the Covid negative certificate. Outside devotees were allowed entry into the temple from January 3.