Odisha gets ready for Rath Yatra

Odisha Channel Bureau Bhubaneswar, June 28: The countdown for the annual Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath has already begun with devotees from all parts of Odisha and outside seeing the deities at Sri Jagannath temple in Puri on the occasion of Nabajoubana Darshan on Saturday morning.Nabajoubana Darshan marks the time when Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra recover from their 14-day-long sickness to give darshan to devotees.The deities were taken sick after their bathing on Snana Purnima day.The annual Rath Yatra will be celebrated in the holy town of Puri when over one million devotees from different corners of the world would congregate in the temple town of Puri in coastal Odisha to have glimpses of the deities on the Grand Road on Sunday.The Daitapati servitors of Lord Jagannath have assured the Jagannath Temple Managing Committee to extend their cooperation to make the nine-day-long car festival.The devotees will not be allowed climb the chariots and touch the deities as was suggested by Puri Shankaracharya. The Daitapatis, who were aggrieved over the High Court order upholding the Shankaracharya’s views that devotees will not be allowed to climb the chariots and touch the deities during the Rath Yatra festival, have announced that they would challenge the court order after the festival.Elaborate security arrangements have been made in Puri to make the Rath Yatra incident-free.Meanwhile, people across Odisha were ready to celebrate Rath Yatra on Sunday when hundreds of chariots of the deities will be pulled by the devotees near many temples.The towns where the Rath Yatra was scheduled to be celebrated in a big way include Jagannath temple at Sabar Srikshetra in Koraput, Tulasi Kshetra Baladevjew temple in Kendrapara, ISKCON temple in Bhubaneswar and other towns such as Keonjhar, Ganjam, Khurdha, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Subarnapur.In fact, the Rath Yatra celebrations will be organised at as many as 1638 places across Odisha. Rath Yatra will also be organised in a massive way at the Jagannath temple at Hauz Khas in New Delhi.The car festival of Lord Jagannath is also scheduled to be celebrated in many others States of India such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Punjab, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra.The Rath Yatra will also be celebrated by the Odia people living in countries such as United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Africa, West Indies, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Indonesia, Russia, Nepal, Japan, Belgium, Netherlands, Kenya, Malaysia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary and Bulgaria.