Varanasi: Ganga Aarti performed four hours earlier due to lunar eclipse

VARANASI: The 'Ganga Aarti', the daily evening ritual at Dashashwamedh Ghat, was performed about four hours earlier at 3pm in view of the lunar eclipse on Tuesday.
The aarti was preponed on the banks of River Ganga for the third year in continuance in view of lunar eclipse. The eclipse would start at 12.13am on July 17 and would end at 5.42am.
Interestingly, this is the third year in continuance that lunar eclipse has occurred on the occasion of Guru Purnima.
Devotees in large number attended the aarti with seven priests who performed the rituals on a wooden platform.
Likewise, gates of all the temples were closed down by 4pm due to the ‘sutak’ (considered inauspicious). Now, the priests of the respective temples, including the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple, would open the portals after the end of the eclipse.
“As the practice goes that no auspicious work is performed during the sutak period, the aarti was performed around four hour before the normal schedule”, said Sushant Mishra, the president of Ganga Seva Nidhi.