Jagannath Rath Yatra Tragedy: Administrative Failures Tarnish Odisha's Sacred Sojourn

When Basanti Sahu, 42, and her family members desperately cried for help after a stampede ensued the day after the famous Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra at Puri, none came to their rescue. She was one of the three who lost their lives that early morning, while close to fifty persons were injured.

Eyewitnesses claimed there were no police to control the surge of devotees, the chaos and the stampede. Devotees from far and wide had gathered in lakhs, braving the monsoon drizzle, hoping it would be easier at night for them to have a glimpse of the deities atop their resplendent chariots, and suddenly the mishap snuffed out three lives.

There were no ambulances nor health volunteers to shift the victims to hospitals. Relatives and others did the rescue job. The entire administration seem to have been sleeping after a tiring day.

Death, either by one’s own wish or due to accidents during the annual Rath Yatra in Puri, is not new. In the olden days, devotees of Lord Jagannath would throw themselves in front of the gigantic wheels of the chariots rolling down the Grand Road, hoping to attain salvation.

The British gave a new connotation to the acts and coined the word ‘Juggernaut’, which, according to the dictionaries, denotes a force or an object that crushes whatever comes in its path. It was the colonisers' attempt to show the Rath Yatra and the religious sentiment associated with it in a bad light.

However, regardless of countless attempts to demean the Rath Yatra by the non-Hindus, it is, perhaps, the only Hindu festival which has embraced a universal acceptance. Millions across the world, irrespective of caste, creed and religion, observe the Rath Yatra with fervour and devotion. For them, it is a celebration of life, which even God is entitled to, like any other ordinary mortal.

It is in this context that conducting the Rath Yatra in Puri smoothly, given the enormity and complexities of the rituals involved, has been a daunting challenge for successive governments. On top of it, the ever-increasing footfall for the occasion each passing year and the expectations of the devotees are insurmountable.

Therefore, it requires meticulous estimation about the footfall, necessary planning to handle the congregation at any given point of time along the four km stretch of the Grand Road, the stage for the show, and scientific mapping of movements of people, besides many other associated coordinates.

Arrangements for the Rath Yatra are a tense and painful exercise for any government. They require sharp thinking and deployment of the right kind of people experienced in seamless handling of crowds in the millions over the nine-day sojourn of the deities, besides sundry other things, including the readiness for any health hazards, particularly the outbreak of diarrhoea and cholera.

Not a single year has passed by where the Rath Yatra has been conducted without glitches despite the best efforts by the administration, but, sadly, lessons were not learnt from past mistakes.

Managing the affairs of Sri Jagannath Temple has never been an easy affair, where the servitors and the administration are constantly at loggerheads. Against this backdrop, the BJP-led Mohan Majhi government, which is into its second year of handling the Rath Yatra, fared badly, with serious administrative lapses written all over the exercise.

The Yatra, which seemed to have gotten off to a smooth start, ran into a spate of problems during the later part of the day when Lord Balabhadra’s chariot veered dangerously from its charted route, causing huge problems for the police and the administration.

Hours later, Lord Jagannath’s `Nandighosh’ would not budge an inch from its place despite massive efforts, and all fingers were pointed at Majhi’s government for alleged inefficiency and mismanagement. Having been pushed to the corner for the Day One fracas, the administration came up with multiple explanations to save its skin and escape severe criticism. But there were more surprises in store, which neither the police nor the administration could apprehend.

Ironically, none in Majhi’s ministry has the necessary administrative understanding or capability to deal with the enormity of the Rath Yatra. Barring one of the two deputy chief ministers, K.V. Singhdeo, no one else, including Chief Minister Majhi himself, had any ministerial experience prior to June 2024.

Even though the administration was well aware of a congregation of nearly a million people on the day of the Rath Yatra and the continuous flow of people to Puri subsequently, it fell short in its assessment of the impending calamity in the small hours of the third day.

Jolted out of his slumber, Majhi offered a personal apology to the devotees for the mishap, announcing ex gratia for the victims, but the matter had clearly gone out of his hands. In a knee-jerk reaction, he transferred the Puri district magistrate, S.S. Swain, and the superintendent of police, Vinit Agarwal, and suspended two senior police officers while ordering an administrative inquiry by the development commissioner-cum-additional chief secretary, Anu Garg, to be submitted within a month.

The Chief Minister has in no uncertain words admitted to a serious administrative and security lapse despite the biggest police bandobast ever in the history of the Rath Yatra. Over 10,000 police personnel and 22 IPS officers were pressed into the service for the smooth conduct of the festival.

Allegations are flying thick and fast about the BJP government issuing VIP and cordon passes to all and sundry in huge numbers, which led to the resultant chaos. Incidentally, the Majhi government is at the butt end of criticism for the second year for goof-ups during the Yatra. Last year, Lord Balabhadra fell from atop his chariot during the return journey, which many thought was a bad omen.

A hue and cry ensued, forcing the government to go on the back foot, but nothing happened. After assuming power last year, the Majhi regime had promised to streamline the ‘darshan’ in Sri Jagannath Temple of Puri by opening all four doors, but it is yet to give any relief to the devotees in the absence of a ‘queue darshan’ as prevalent in Thirumala Devasthanam.

Its promise of unravelling the ‘Ratna Bhandar’ (the treasury of gold and precious stones) mystery of the temple still remains an enigma, as nothing concrete has emerged, though a former High Court judge was assigned the task. Lord Jagannath is not a deity carved out of wood; His culture is entrenched in a million minds. He represents the ethos of millions, and such happenings, which affect the religious sentiments, may not be healthy for the Majhi government.

The writer is a senior journalist.