Spl darshan for servitors’ elderly women kin

Bhubaneswar: Elderly women from the families of servitors of Puri Jagannath Temple have a reason to rejoice with the shrine administration deciding to facilitate special darshan for them at Gundicha Temple during the Rath Yatra, starting June 20.
For the first time, the temple administration has decided to provide free accommodation to the elderly women family members of servitors in the shrine’s guesthouse near the Gundicha Temple.


The temple administration said elderly women in the families of servitors maintain utmost austerity throughout the nine-day Rath Yatra and visit Gundicha Temple to offer prayers. The sibling deities — Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra come out of Jagannath Temple on the occasion of Rath Yatra and spend seven days at Gundicha Temple, believed to be their birthplace, about 3 km away.
“Elderly women in the families of servitors were facing hardship to visit the Gundicha Temple amid the heavy rush of devotees. We proposed to the temple administration to facilitate smooth darshan of the elderly women in the families of sevayats in Gundicha Temple,” said Ananta Tiadi, a servitor and one of the members of the temple’s managing committee.
The Jagannath temple administration said they have accepted the proposal and will arrange accommodation for at least 50 or 60 elderly women of the families of servitors at Shree Gundicha Bhakta Niwas, about 100 metres from the Gundicha Temple. While about 2,000 servitors have been rendering their services for generations in the temple, the temple administration has arranged the facility for about 50 elderly women in their families on an experimental basis.
“We will ensure proper accommodation for them. They will also be served Mahaprasad. The beneficiaries will be chosen on first-come-first serve basis,” chief administrator of Jagannath temple administration, Ranjan Kumar Das, told TOI.