The State Government aims at hoisting the Nabakalebar festival as a world event on digital space through interactive website, mobile app and social media. The IT applications for the purpose initiated by IT Department were reviewed on Wednesday at a high-level meeting under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati at the Secretariat here. IT Principal Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena along with an IT team presented the updates for discussion.
The Chief Secretary advised to include the outskirts of Puri like Raghurajpur, Sakshigopal, Pipili and Konark on the website. A committee was constituted with SJTA Chief Administrator Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, IT Secretary PK Jena, I&PR Secretary Madhusudan Padhi, Tourism & Culture Secretary Dr Arabanida Padhee and the Puri Collector and Superintendent of Police as members to scrutinise the contents to be put in the website which has been named www.nabakalebara.gov.in.
The website has been designed for facilitating access of tourists to various civil amenities and to showcase Odisha Travel & Tourism. The structure of the website contains principal sections like Nabakalebar: its history, role of Daitapatis, sevayats and ongoing rituals; Visit Plan: map, how to reach, tour guide, accommodation, Puri outskirts, places to visit in Odisha; In News: twitter speaks, open mind, multimedia, archive; Utilities: health, parking, safety, local travel; and Shreekshetra: its history, ongoing rituals.
The schedule of the festival, video, photographs, books art and music relating to the Shreekshetra and Nabakalebar will also be out in the website. The SJTA will provide day-wise photographs and videos of the happenings and rituals in the temple to be hoisted in website. The website will also be related to social media like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube and mobile app. It was decided to relate the new website with www.nabakalebara.nic.in hoisted earlier by the Tourism Department so that anybody switching to the earlier site will also be automatically linked to the new site.