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Help at hand for devotees at Puri temple

Puri: Pilgrims facing problems inside the Jagannath Temple here can now pay obeisance in peace with the temple authorities recruiting ‘yatri sahayaks’ to help them. As part of the reforms process in the 12th century shrine, the temple authorities besides counselling priests to deal with pilgrims in a better way have recruited the sahayaks to help devotees in having smooth ‘darshan’ of the deities,

Chief Administrator of the temple Suresh Chandra Mohapatra told reporters here that the yatri sahayaks would help the visitors, who are encountering problems during darshan at various temples and those sevayats, who would be found causing nuisance or misbehaving with pilgrims would be apprehended, he said.

Besides, the 17 yatri sahayaks already there to assist devotees, 27 more yatri sahayaks have been recruited, he said.

The initiatives were made in the backdrop of the alleged assault on a Bengali tourist on the temple compound here recently.

A meeting of the temple ‘supakars’ (cooks) was also being convened soon for improving the quality of ‘mahaprasad’, which is offered to the deities and subsequently sold to the pilgrims at the ‘Ananda Baazar’ (the temple dining hall), he said.

Mohapatra also said that the temple administration had also came across a palanquin, which is made of ivory in the Sakhigopinath temple inside the shrine in this temple city.

- PTI

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