Coming down heavily on the food stall owners selling stale food items during the Baliyatra here, health officials of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) have destroyed more than five quintals of such foods during the past five days of the eight-day-long festival.
“We will continue this exercise for the remaining days of the festival in order to ensure that stale food items do not find their ways into the plates of the revellers,” said CMC Health Officer Dr PK Pradhan. Every morning teams of the civic body are visiting the food stalls and seizing the overnight food items and destroying them with a stern warning to the vendors.
While the food stalls are witnessing heavy rush in absence of joyrides this year, the handicraft pavilion set up by the Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (Ormas) is also a preferred destination at the Baliyatra. The 300-odd stalls here have registered more than six lakh visitors by Friday evening, sources said, adding that the Ormas pavilion has made business worth over Rs 6 crore.
“The business in the pavilion this year has been very encouraging, and we hope to cross the Rs 10-crore-mark,” said Ormas Zonal Manager Bipin Rout, adding that further brisk business is expected during the last two days of the fair. The Ormas pavilion had registered Rs 9.5-crore businesses last year and Rs 8.5 crore in the previous year.
Traders from at least 26 States of the country have come with their traditional handicraft products this year. “Almost all the stalls here are witnessing heavy footfalls as buyers are finding the ethnic products attractive at reasonable prices,” Rout said.
like previous years, winter garments from Rajasthan, footwears from Punjab, furniture from Uttar Pradesh and hand-woven textiles from Andhra Pradesh are much in demand, and these durable and cheaper products are selling like hotcakes.
Odisha traders dealing with handloom products, terracotta, marble and jute products are also doing brisk business. More than 200 stalls of the pavilion are reserved for the local traders while the remaining ones have been allotted to the traders from other States. looking at the encouraging response from outside traders, the fair organisers are thinking of allotting more stalls to them next year.
Another handicraft pavilion, the Gandhi Shilpa Bazaar with nearly 150 stalls, is also drawing large numbers of visitors. Run exclusively by Self-Help Groups (SHGs), the stalls here are also doing brisk business. The district administration here has also provided some exclusive stalls for physically-handicap traders, allowing them to be part of the mainstream.