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Rural Orissa in the grip of puja fever

Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

People throng roadside eateries during Durga puja festive days in Bhubaneswar. —

CUTTACK: It’s not the Millennium City alone reverberating with puja revelries. Even rural pockets of the district are also under the grip of puja fever.

Apart from the 154-puja pandals in the city, Durga puja is celebrated at 131 mandaps in Cuttack Sadar circle, 42 in Choudwar, 22 in Baranga and at 134 pandals in Athgarh circle of the district.

Police sources maintain that puja celebrations are going on peacefully at every mandap in the district since Thursday morning and hundreds of devotees thronged the mandaps on Friday to perform Durga Astami puja. In Cuttack city more than 10,000 women devotees thronged Chandi Mandir and Gad Chandi temples, police said.

According to reports reaching here, devotees in rural areas are more enthusiastic about the puja.

Unlike in the past when people from far off places were coming to the Millennium City to witness puja now prefer to remain in the villages to celebrate the occasion with same spirit.

“Looking at the law and order situation in the city during puja, it is better to go home in villages and celebrate the occasion with family members,” said Jharana Mohanty of Salipur who works as a lecturer in a college in the city.

She has left for her village with her children as soon as her college and schools of her children closed for puja holidays.

The district police too have made adequate arrangements in the rural areas to ensure that the celebrations go off peacefully. In view of more force deployment for the immersion celebration after the Bijaya Dasami on Sunday, different circles would have their immersions on different days, said an official of the police DIB here.

Meanwhile, heavy rush, unpleasant weather and volatile law and order situation in the city have forced some city dwellers to skip the revelry here.

Many families from Cuttack have gone to Mysore to witness the Dussehra while some families have gone to the Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s abode at Puttaparthy in Andhra Pradesh to spend the puja holidays.

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