Konark: All hell broke loose at the iconic Sun Temple here on Tuesday after an e-ticketing glitch at the ticket counter stalled entry of tourists to the temple for about an hour.
Impatient at the delay, thousands of tourists, who had lined up for entry, literally swooped down on the temple compound, pushing aside security and disregarding COVID protocols. In what could be called a complete administrative breakdown, many of the tourists were seen jumping the boundary walls of the temple and breaking through the gates, as utter chaos reigned inside.
There were no policeman or security guard to bring the situation under control. Footages of people going on rampage were shown on media channels. The police were called in later, but they proved meagre in front of the huge crowd. However, once the ticketing system got working, the situation normalised later in the day.
Sources said the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), that maintains and manages the site, has only 3,000 tokens or visitor slots at one time. Once one lot of visitors are out, then only another set of 3,000 visitors are allowed entry.
However, in holiday season, the number of tourists see a surge. On Tuesday, there were an estimated 12,000 visitors to the temple, who were waiting in a 2-km-long line. As the wait was getting longer, the server went kaput at around 10.15 am, only to remain so for almost an hour.
This incensed the tourists and already exhausted at the long wait, they crushed all barriers and pushed through the gate. The security guards were shoved away in the melee.
As a blame game between different departments has started over who is responsible for the episode, people said that when the ASI knows the possibility of such tourist influx, why don’t they keep a Plan B ready? It is to be noted that a couple of years ago too an incident of this sort had happened here.
“A technical glitch can always happen. What if it happens again? There must be a manual system with the ASI to fall back on at the time of need,” a tourist, who was not a part of the crowd, said.
