9 ft long, 5 ft wide: Huge diya lit in Sri Loknath temple
PURI: A huge diya (earthen lamp) was lit in Sri Loknath temple on the occasion of ‘Pankaudhar Ekadasi’ on Tuesday. Puri MLA Jayant Kumar Sarangi lighted the diya made by a devotee Ramakrushna Hota.
The lamp is nine feet long, five feet wide and one metre deep. It can hold 2.5 quintal of ghee. The diya would burn continuously from Tuesday night till the end of ‘Jagar Yatra’ of Sri Loknath on Friday morning.
On the day, hundreds of devotees visited Sri Loknath temple and offered prayers to the Lord by adhering to the social distancing and other Covid-19 norms. In the morning, servitors cleaned the sanctum sanctorum which houses the ‘Lingam’ and ‘Shakti’.
The devotees are allowed to have darshan of the ‘Lingam’ and ‘Shakti’, which remain under water for the
entire year, only on the occasion of ‘Pankaudhar Ekadasi’. However this year, the devotees were not allowed inside the sanctum sanctorum.
The district administration had made elaborate arrangements for the ritual. As many as 15 platoons of police force were deployed while Sub-Collector Bhabataran Sahu looked after all the arrangements. The Jagar Yatra would begin on Thursday night.