Puri: Jagannath Temple in Odisha’s Puri town will remain out of bounds for devotees for five hours from 6 pm on Wednesday for the Banakalagi Niti of the sibiling deities, which will resume in the 12th-century shrine after a gap of over a month.
According to the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA), the temple will be shut from 6 pm to 11 pm for the special ritual, which will be conducted after the end of the second Bhoga Mandap ritual.
Banakalagi is performed using ‘kasturi’, ‘harital’, ‘karpura’, ‘kesar’, ‘kalasankha’ and ‘dhalasankha’. During the ritual, the darshan of the deities remains suspended.
Notably, the facial ritual at Srimandir was disrupted and has not been conducted since Niladri Bije (June 1), when the sibling deities returned to the sanctum sanctorum after the annual Rath Yatra, following a dispute between the servitors of Dutta Mohapatra Nijog and Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) over the day it should be performed.
The Temple Managing Committee meeting held last week finally decided that the ritual would be conducted twice a month on Wednesdays. “In case, there are other rituals on a particular Wednesday, then the Banakalagi Niti can be conducted on Thursday,” Puri Collector Samarth Verma had informed on July 4.
He, however, clarified that the decision to postpone the ritual will be taken by STJA.
