Last Rath Yatra Coordination Meeting Postponed To July 6

Puri: The third and last Rath Yatra Coordination Meeting has been postponed to July 6.

Sources said the meeting scheduled for Tuesday was deferred as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who was to preside over it, had some important programmes to attend to.

On the other hand, senior servitor and assistant secretary of Daitapati Nijog of the Jagannath temple Binayak Dasmohapatra has said the meeting has been postponed due to the discontentment among the servitors. It will be held after the temple administration conducts a meeting with the servitors to resolve the standoff, he added.

It may be mentioned that the Jagannath Sevayat Sammilani on Saturday had urged the servitors of Jagannath Temple to boycott the coordination meeting.

In posters put up outside the temple wall, the outfit, citing instances starting from the Niladri Bije to the alleged letter from Rashtrapati Bhawan, had condemned the repressive attitude Puri collector Arvind Agarwal towards the servitors.

It also alleged that the collected had started a vilification campaign against the servitor entire community to tarnish its image.

The servitors were up in arms against the collector after the chief administrator of Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) told the media that it had received no letter from Rashtrapati Bhawan Communique regarding the alleged disrespect to the President of India Ram Nath Kovind and his wife Savita Kovind by some servitors during their visit to the temple on March 18.

Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi too had confirmed having not received any letter from the Rashtrapati Bhawan on this issue.

Following the confirmation, Binayak Dasmohapatra had lodged a complaint against the Puri collector and former SJTA chief administrator Pradip Kumar Jena at Simhadwara police station, demanding action against them for providing false information and trying to malign the servitor community.