The Supreme Court will hear behind closed doors, on Monday, a host of pleas seeking the recall of its ban on the annual Puri Jagannath Rath Yatra this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The petitions said the yatra has been conducted under “all circumstances” since time immemorial. It was not stopped even during the throes of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.
The petitions said an interruption in the religious rituals would affect not only the sanctity of the temple but the whole society in general. Moreover, it would be a blow to millions of devotees across the world.
“Temple and its practices have survived the worst of iconoclastic invasions. It would indeed be unfortunate if its practices are broken in modern independent India which constitutionally recognises and guarantees freedom of religion,” said a petition filed by Janardhan Pattajoshi Mohapatra, the hereditary chief servitor of Lord Jagannatha of the Puri temple.
In the latest petition, BJP leader Sambit Patra, who lost the Lok Sabha election from Puri last year, approached the court for permission to hold the yatra. However, his petition is not listed before Justice S. Ravindra Bhat. The judge is hearing the case in his chambers and not in open court.
Besides the plea by Mohapatra, the other petitions listed before Justice Bhat are those of Saroj Kumar Sahu, secretary of the Cuttack-based Jagannath Sanskrutika Jana Jagaran Manch, and Aftab Hussein, an individual.
On June 18, a three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde, had stayed the yatra scheduled for June 23. Chief Justice of India Bobde had cited public health and the safety of citizens as the reason, saying the event would attract a large gathering amid the pandemic. The Odisha government agreed to the injunction, though the Centre remained inconclusive. The Chief Justice of India had said Lord Jagannath would forgive the judges for not allowing the yatra.
Urging the court to rethink this decision, the petitioners said the preparations for the yatra included extensive precautions in line with the guidelines to check the spread of COVID-19.
“This Rath Yatra is unique and has an unbroken tradition... It is humbly reiterated that this ritual is not a mere celebratory festivity for public consumption, but is a mandatory and essential part of the temple’s religious practice, which the temple or its administrators are religiously mandated to observe and perform under any and all circumstances,” the petitions said.
They said the practice has been recorded in the Skanda Purana and the Niladri Mahodaya, which attest to the validity and significance of the yatra.