UP: Temples and mosques open at Sangam city, restaurants to start functioning from June 10

PRAYAGRAJ: With the district administration issuing the guidelines, that would be followed while functioning of the religious places, temples and mosques of Prayagraj reopened from Monday. These religious places followed all the norms that the administration and were attended by devotees although in smaller numbers.
Although the administration had issued guidelines for the functioning of the malls, restaurants and shopping malls too, but they were by and large closed today and would start their activities from June 10.
One of the prominent temple of the city, the bade Hanuman ji temple of Sangam, opened for dharshan for common devotees from 5am on Monday. Amidst chanting of slogans by the students of the veda school of the city, the deity was bathed by Ganga water and decorated, later aarti was performed and the temple reopened after its closure on March 22.
"All the devotees were seen following the norms including wearing of masks and those who arrived without face mask, the temples management provided them with the same, no one is allowed to offered any 'Bhog' (offering) and devotees have been requested not to touch anything inside the temple", said Mahant Narendra Giri, the head priest of the temple. The evening aarti was also performed at the temple and the president of Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad has thanked the PM, home minister and the chief minister to agree to parishad’s demand of opening the temples.
However, at other temples of the city, the concept of social distancing was openly flouted at the very first day of opening. Although the temples management provided sanitisers to the devotees, but the chimes were let opened for being touched by all, one of the major threat towards spreading the infection. Likewise, at another temple, while the aarti was being performed by the invitee VIP, the devotees were seen standing in her proximity, indifferent of the fact that they are not following social distancing.
At Choti masjid, Harwara, like all the other mosques of the city, only five devotees offered the namaz. “We have made arrangements that only five persons will offer the namaz and worked out an understanding among ourselves that these five persons would be the same for all the five mamaz that is offered in our masjid,” said maulana of the mosque, Ekramul Haque Azhari.
At the same time, many of the restaurants did not started their operations on Monday. The district magistrate, Bhanu Chandra Goswami held a meeting with many of the malls and restaurant owners, on Monday.
"They have been told to follow the instruction in letter and spirit and give us an undertaking that they would be abiding by the norms after which they can go forward with running their operations", said the DM.
In the meantime, the restaurants were seen preparing for starting their business from June 10 onwards.
"We have sanitised the entire premises and reduced the number of chairs and tables to half, there would be thermal screening of each visitor and we would be following all norms", said Raju Jaiswal, owner of one of the oldest restaurant of the civil lines locality of the city. He, like other restaurant owners, is apprehensive of the business that the industry would get even though they would start functioning.
"As school-colleges are closed, there would be less youngsters coming out which were 70% of the total customers and even the families would not like to dine out for atlest next two months, as we anticipate, that would be the real challenge for all of us", added Jaiswal.
Likewise, many of the shopping malls of the city have also started sanitising their premises and will start their services from June 9.