PURI/BHUBANESWAR: A four-year-long demand of Lord Jagannath’s devotees seeking entry through all four gates of the Shree Jagannath temple at Puri was finally fulfilled on Thursday, within hours of the Mohan Charan Majhi government taking oath in Odisha.
After ‘Mangala Alati’ - the first ritual of the temple - the four gates of the shrine were opened in the presence of Chief Minister Majhi, deputy CMs KV Singh Deo and Pravati Parida, cabinet ministers, MLAs and Puri MP Sambit Patra.
After offering prayers in the sanctum sanctorum, Vimala and Mahalaxmi temples, they paid their respects at the Mukti Mandapa - the high seat of religious scholars in the shrine. The CM and other dignitaries went around the Parikrama and met locals and servitors. Incidentally, no special provisions were put in place by the district administration or police for the visit of CM and his ministers who arrived in Puri on Wednesday night after the first cabinet meeting in Bhubaneswar.
“We passed the proposal to open all four gates of Mahaprabhu Lord Jagannath’s temple in yesterday’s cabinet meeting. Today at 6:30 am, I, along with deputy CMs, ministers and Puri MP, attended the Mangala Alati. In the presence of everyone and the district administration officials, all four gates of the shrine were opened. All other issues of the temple will be resolved by the government on a priority basis,” Majhi said after stepping out of the temple. The cabinet had also cleared a proposal for creating a corpus fund of Rs 500 crore in the next state budget for conservation, maintenance and management of the temple.
Opening of the four gates of Srimandir is the first election promise that the new government has fulfilled. The issue had figured prominently in the BJP’s election manifesto for Odisha and was raked up by several party leaders during their poll campaigns. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the state government, which was then led by the BJD, had decided to close all the doors for devotees except the Lions Gate. With only one gate open for the entry of devotees, it often led to overcrowding outside the temple, and poor crowd management worsened things further.
For devotees, who had a hassle free ‘darshan’ on opening of the gates, it was a moment of celebration.
“It was a long-standing demand and people had to go through a lot of difficulties to enter the temple. Sometimes, darshan of the Trinity for a few seconds required standing in a queue for five hours,” said Kailash Panigrahy, a devotee from Ganjam. Locals also celebrated the occasion by distributing sweets.
On Wednesday night, police and temple authorities set up temporary shoe stands and luggage rooms at all the four gates of the temple. Among others, Chief Secretary PK Jena, temple administrator Vir Vikram Yadav, Director (Intelligence) Soumendra Priyadarshi were present in Puri.
On the way back to Bhubaneswar, the Chief Minister visited Suando, the native village of Utkalamani Gopabandhu Das, and paid tributes. He also visited the museum on Gopabandhu Das. Locals were also allowed to meet the new CM.