Lord Jagannath’s Rath Yatra In Puri: Special Darshan At Gundicha Temple For Elderly Women Of Servitors’ Families

Bhubaneswar: There is a good news for elderly women belonging to the families of servitors of Shree Jagannath Temple in Odisha’s Puri. The temple administration has reportedly decided to arrange special darshan for them at the Gundicha Temple during the Rath Yatra festival starting June 20.

According to sources, 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.

Notably, elderly women in the families of servitors maintain utmost austerity throughout the nine-day Rath Yatra and visit Gundicha Temple to offer prayers to the sibling deities. The deities of Lord Balabhadra, Lord Jagannath and Devi Subhadra come out of Jagannath Temple on the occasion of Rath Yatra for their annual sojourn at the 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,” Ananta Tiadi, a servitor and member of the temple’s managing committee, was quoted by TOI as saying.

Accepting the proposal, the Jagannath temple administration said they 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,” according to chief administrator of Jagannath temple administration, Ranjan Kumar Das.