Jagannath Temple Deities Were Offered Bhog: Minister

Bhubaneswar: Law minister Pratap Jena on Wednesday claimed that that the Lords of the Jagannath Temple had not remained without bhog.

The minister, while giving a clarification as per the directive of the Speaker, said though there was delay in the rituals, the report that the Lords had remained without the bhog is baseless.

“The Bhog Mandap rituals of the Lords could not be performed on Monday due to non-cooperation of the servitors of the Suara and Mahasuara Nijog. As a result, the Bhog prepared in the temple kitchen could not be offered to the Lords. Since the volume of the Bhog meant for the Lords and about 15,000 devotees was huge, it took almost 11 hours to empty it from the temple kitchen. After the cleaning was completed, the Bhog Mandap rituals were performed at 10.50 pm,” Jena said.

Stating that the rituals of the Lords have been performed in time by the servitors on Wednesday, he said the chief administrator of the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has been asked to sincerely look into the problems of the servitors to ensure that such incident does not occur in future.

It may be mentioned that the State Assembly was stalled for two consecutive days since Monday over the disruption in the rituals of the Lords in Jagannath temple.

As a last resort, the Speaker on Tuesday had adjourned the House twice and convened an all-party meeting to resolve the issue.

At the meeting, he asked the government to give a clarification in this regard in the House.