Chief minister Mamata Baneerjee today pulled the rope of the Rath of Lord Jagannath to mark the beginning of the first ever Rath Yatra festival in Digha.
She pulled the rope at 2.18 p.m. to mark the beginning of the festival in the presence of senior bureaucrats, police officers and thousands of devotees.
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Swami Jnanalokananda, secretary of Swami Vivekananda’s ancestral house broke the cocoanut while Miss Banerjee cleaned the road with a golden broomstick to start the Rath Yatra.
The Rath of Lord Jagannath called Nandighosh, draped with red and gold colour with 16 wheels along with Balaram’s Rath named as Taldhawj with 14 wheels and Subhadra’s Rath as Darpadolon with 12 wheels to chug off would traverse 1 km to reach the old Jagannath temple at Digha, which in turn would host the lord Jagannath as his aunt house, was however, gaudily bedecked.
Crowds ,which swelled since morning, and stood in queues waiting in bated breath to have a glimpse and a touch of the holy rope attached to the raths. However, they were contained by barricades to avert any untoward incidents. The chariots stopped at intersections to allow the devotees to have a darshan of the trio.
“We are happy to see Rath Yatra at Digha for we could not go to Puri to witness such a grand spectacle. This is an added gift for us. It would have been better had we been able to touch the rope,” said a dejected woman, who stood at a queue to witness the Yatra.
The chief minister too followed raths to walk down the distance to reach the old Jagannath temple.
The aunt house too host Jagannath with grand bhog, for which 56 varieties of bhog would be dedicated to the former to be cooked by 10 cooks.
The Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) has constructed the temple which is not the star attraction of the coastal town. The temple was inaugurated on 30 April. Since then the temple has attracted lakhs of people. All rooms in the hotels were sold today. Miss Banerjee and the state chief secretary Manoj Pant and director general of police Rajeev Kumar had inspected the site to make it a grand success.