About 10,000 police and security forces would be deployed for safe conduct of the Nabakalebar ritual and the Rath Yatra in Puri in 2015.
Since the ritual of taking new bodies by lord Jagannath, lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Sudarshan falls after a gap of 19 years, the administration is expecting 30 to 40 lakh pilgrims to throng Puri to witness it as well as the annual Car Festival of the deities in new bodies.
SP Asish Kumar Singh in a Press conference here on Friday elaborated the security and other arrangements being worked out by the police administration during the two events.
Apart from police personnel, 14 units of senior police personnel would be formed to conduct the VVIPs and control crowd and traffic, besides emergency services. There would be bomb detection and disposal units, dog squads and intelligence gathering units as well.
As per the arrangement, sea, air and land routes would be kept under tight security. The police would ensure safety of the entire city, pilgrims and temple while armed vessels of the Coast Guard would patrol along the Puri coast.
Efforts are also on to make the Puri air space a no flying zone. Three tier security arrangements would be put in place at the main temple, the Gundicha temple and around the three Raths during the Car Festival. Four watch towers on all four sides of the temple would be manned by security personnel during the event. A special contingency plan has been prepared to meet the terrorist challenge, the SP divulged.
He further said that luggage scanners would be installed at the temple main gate where the hand bags of the pilgrims would be scanned and at the south gate through which food grains and rations enter into the temple kitchen.
Besides, 200 more life guards would be added to the existing 100 personnel along the Puri beach from Chakratirth to Swargdwar to prevent drowning in the sea. 14 watch towers would be erected along the beach for surveillance of the pilgrims taking holy dip in the sea.
Ten PCR vans and ten ambulances will be provided to the police for use in the festival arrangements, Singh informed, adding that all the 16 unsafe buildings situated along the Grand Road, the venue of the fete, would be demolished.
The entire 10 km road from Maltipatpur bus stand to Puri would be illuminated and 150 CCTV cameras would be installed along the route to Puri. This apart, 32 CCTV cameras would be installed in the Jagannath temple. Two integrated CCTV control rooms would be made operational during the ritual.
While one at the Town Police Station would control the entire city affairs, the other at the Kumbharpada Police Station would control the conduct of vehicular traffic movement. The State Government has sanctioned 50 trained police officers to man these control rooms, 25 for each control room round the clock, said Singh.