Puri temple servitors protest, deities go hungry
Puri Jagannath temple faced an unusual delay in receiving their morning bhog on Friday, as a strike by temple servitors disrupted the customary routine.
Typically, the deities are offered their first meal at 8:30 am, but on this day, hunger pangs continued until 5:30 pm. This disruption arose from a protest by servitors in response to a priest's controversial entry into the shrine for conducting rituals, despite a ban imposed on him due to his alleged inter-caste marriage in 2017, according to a report in the Times of India.
While the strike impacted the scheduled rituals, the temple's public darshan remained unaffected.
However, efforts by the temple administration to pacify the servitors proved unsuccessful throughout the day. Eventually, the administration agreed to proceed with the cleansing ritual, which took place around 2:10 pm.
Subsequently, rituals resumed at approximately 2:20 pm, and the deities were finally offered their breakfast at 5:30 pm.
Ranjan Das, the chief administrator of the temple, expressed the administration's intention to take action against those responsible for the disruption.
In response to the allegations against him, Singhari, the priest at the center of the controversy, denied any wrongdoing and claimed that he had conducted rituals at the temple in the previous year as well.
Earlier this month, TOI reported that the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has decided to reintroduce the ticketed (parimanik) darshan system that was discontinued seven years ago.
Quoting sources in SJTA, the Times of India had claimed that the existing free darshan system will remain unaffected. «The ticketed darshan will be scheduled for a few hours every day.
