PURI: Despite the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) making arrangements for the conduct of ‘Banakalagi’ (facial) of the Trinity at Srimandir on Wednesday, the Dattamahapatra servitors did not perform the ritual till Wednesday night.
The temple administration has issued a show-cause to the servitors. This is the third consecutive week after Niladri Bije that the Banakalagi ritual of the three deities has not been conducted in the temple.
The stalemate continues with the Dattamahapatra servitors insisting that the ritual be conducted on Thursdays while the SJTA wants it to be performed on Wednesdays.
SJTA administrator Ranjan Das told media persons that all arrangements for the ritual were made by the temple administration beforehand. “So the claims of Dattamahapatra servitors that arrangements were not in place for the ritual today does not hold true,” he said. Banakalagi is performed using ‘kasturi’, ‘harital’, ‘karpura’, ‘kesar’, ‘kalasankha’ and ‘dhalasankha’. During the ritual, the darshan of the deities remains suspended for four hours.
From 2018, Banakalagi is being performed on Wednesdays as per the decision of the Srimandir Managing Committee as other rituals of the deities will be delayed if it is conducted on Thursdays. On the other hand, the head of Dattamahapatra servitors Madan Dattamahapatra said they will not budge from their stand on holding the ritual on Thursdays as recorded in the temple record of rights.
“This tradition of conducting Banakalagi on Thursdays has been going on for long. So we will perform it only on Thursday. As per our records, the ritual was performed once or twice a month as the temple was unable to provide the necessary ingredients,” he said. Earlier, Puri collector Samarth Verma and the temple chief administrator held discussions with the Dattamahapatra Nijog over the issue but till the filing of this report, Banakalagi had not been performed in the temple.