Jagannath Temple parikrama on the cards

BHUBNAESWAR: The Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has decided to construct a pathway around the shrine for parikrama (going around the temple) and more accommodation centres for pilgrims in Puri.
The sub-committee of temple projects here on Monday approved the two projects. "We have enough open space adjacent to the Meghanada Pacheri (boundary wall).Encroachments are being removed," SJTA chief administrator Suresh Mohapatra said.
In the first phase, the SJTA would construct two hotels in the Holy City. The two hotels will come up near Puri Town Police Station and jail. The temple has lands there, Mohapatra said. The shrine body said it would also use vacant lands and open spaces of different mutts and dharmasalas in Puri for construction of hotels.
At present, the temple runs two hotels, located near Jagannath Temple and Gundicha Temple. Both the hotels can accommodate 310 pilgrims.
The temple administration also plans to beautify the surrounding of the shrine by developing landscape lighting along the boundary wall. Though the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) recently planted saplings along the boundary wall, maintenance is lacking.
At night-time, landscape lighting would provide visual delight to devotees, said another temple officer. The temple body is planning to do the landscape lighting in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. The project is also aimed at preventing vendors from encroaching on the periphery of the temple.
Though the 12th century shrine is one of the famous temples in the country and attracts more than 50,000 pilgrims a day, they complain about the dirty surrounding of the temple. Not only the vendors have encroached on the land abutting the boundary wall but also the temple dumps truck-loads of garbage, generated from the shrine's kitchen, near Meghanada Pacheri. Inside the temple, beautiful architectures on the wall have been defaced by stains of betel and gutka.
In the end of 2006, the temple administration decided to slap a fine of Rs 100 on anyone spitting inside the temple. But it was hardly ever implemented. The authorities could not even figure out how many offenders (both priests and pilgrims) had been fined so far.