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Rath Yatra 2026 (Img: Pinterest)
Puri: The coastal town of Odisha, Puri is all set for the Jagannath Rath Yatra. The city all set to welcome the devotees and Jagannath chariots to roll to the Gundicha Temple on thurday
Every year lakhs of devotees visit the coastal town to attend Lord Jagannath and his siblings begin their annual journey to the Gundicha temple.
In the meantime, the festival's grandeur brings a great challenge in managing the lakhs of devotees who flock to Puri for the nine-day festival.
With sour memories of last year's stampede are still a fresh, the Odisha government has left no stone unturned to make sure this year's event passes without a hitch.
The three chariots– Nandighosha of Lord Jagannath, Taladhwaja of Lord Balabhadra and Darpadalana of Devi Subhadra– are now stationed in front of the temple under tight security.
Following traditional rituals, including the ceremonial Chhera Pahanra by the Gajapati Maharaja, the chariots are scheduled to start their journey to the Gundicha Temple at around 4 pm on Thursday.
The story of Lord Jagannath is a deeply moving legend of pure devotion and unconditional love to lord Vishnu.
It moves around King Indradyumna’s quest to find a mysterious, wooden incarnation of the Supreme Lord, which miraculously materialized into an abstract, incomplete form with large eyes and no hands or feet.
With lessons from 2025 stampede, which left three dead and over 50 people injured, the government has put in place an elaborate security and crowd management plan.
Arround 12,000 police personnel and over 200 executive magistrates have been deployed at different locations across the city.
Besides cops and central forces, personnel from the Navy and Coast Guard have also been roped in.
In 2025 Rath Yatra, a massive crowd rushed towards Gundicha temple for the first darshan of the deities, resulted in the stampede.
A high-level probe was ordered after the opposition BJD slammed the government's "incompetence" and "abysmal failure" in crowd management.
The inquiry report said the police failed to manage the swelling crowd near the chariots and allowed a loaded truck to enter the choc-a-block area, triggering the stampede.
The probe, led by development commissioner Anu Garg, also found several CCTVs to be either poorly positioned or non-functional. In fact, of the 275 CCTV cameras, only 123 functioned at any point, the report said.
This time, the government started preparations for the festival seven months in advance. Multiple evacuation corridors have been earmarked to facilitate the swift movement of devotees in cases of emergency or chaos.
The authorities are also preparing for adverse weather after the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a red alert for heavy rainfall in Puri.
The temple town received nearly 144 mm of rain over the past 24 hours, prompting authorities to deploy pumps to clear waterlogging from the Grand Road where the chariots will be pulled.
