As many as 51 vendors and small businessmen at Sarala temple in Jhankada village under Tirtol block, whose makeshift shops and unauthorised houses were demolished during lord Balabhadra’s Daru cutting, sought rehabilitation from the district administration and the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA).
They demanded restoration of their razed shops and construction of a market complex.
Reports said that after lord Balabhadra’s Daru was identified near Sarala Temple at Jhankada, shops and unauthorized makeshift houses surrounding the Daru site were demolished for paving construction of Sabarapalli (shed for Banajaga members) and Yajana Mandap.
As many as 51 such houses and shops were razed without any protest from the victims even though they had been doing business there since long back to eke out a living.
The Jagatsinghpur district administration and the SJTA chief administrator Suresh Chandra Mohapatra had assured the victims that after the holy Daru was shifted to Puri, they would be rehabilitated and their houses would be rebuilt for restoration of their business. They had also promised to construct a market complex for rehabilitating the victims.
“The Daru cutting rituals have been completed and the Daru has been shifted to Puri, but the civil administration has overlooked the sufferings of the victim vendors and small businessmen. No step has been taken to rehabilitate the vendors,” rued Sarala Mandir Banika Sangha secretary Sarat Kumar Singh.
On the contrary, the administration has rubbed salt into the wounds of the victim vendors by announcing that no temporary vending zone or makeshift shops would be allowed henceforth at the evicted site, he lamented.
Sources informed that the victims had been occupying the shops and improvised houses in front of the Sarala temple for years. They were selling flower, Bhog and other Puja items, while a few of them had set up cycle and two-wheeler stands and shoe stands to eke out a living. Earlier, the temple trust board had taken several attempts to evict them but had not succeeded. However, the district administration utilised the advantage of Daru identification and demolished the unauthorized shops and retrieved the temple land from the clutches of the encroachers, sources added.
The SJTA chief administrator has assured us providing money for a market complex. Once the project is completed, the evicted people would be rehabilitated, informed Jagatsinghpur sub collector cum Sarala temple trust board member Narahari Sethy.