The festival of Janmashtami was celebrated in the city with traditional fervour and zeal on Monday.
On the auspicious occasion, the city’s famous temples including Gopal Mandir, Gokul Chandrama Mandir and Giriraj Mandir geared itself up for the celebrations that commenced at 6 am and will continue till midnight.
Huge rush was witnessed at lord Krishna temples as a number of devotees thronged for ‘darshan’ throughout the day.
‘Prasad’ was distributed among devotees, who had gathered to sing ‘bhajans’ and ‘kirtans’ from early morning. The idols of lord Krishna were bathed and new clothes were put on the idols.
The temples were decorated with flowers.
The lord was offered ‘Abhishek’ of 551 litres milk at Radhakrishna Mandir, located in Jawahar Nagar. The temple had made full preparations for the Janmashtami celebrations where the highlight was the tableau depicting the different stages of lord Krishna’s life. The tableau will be taken out for exhibition on Tuesday.
Children were seen dressing as lord Krishna, Radha, Yashoda, Devaki, Vasudeva, Sudama etc. They enacted different episodes from the life of lord Krishna like ‘makhan-chori’, ‘matka-phor’ and ‘Krishna leela’ etc.
To mark the birth of lord Krishna, ‘Shrikrishna Janmashtami Utsav avam Vikas Samiti’ launched a ‘Shobha-yatra’ from Jai Hind sports ground.
As many as 35 teams participated in ‘Dahi-loot’ competition held to mark the festival. The participants were dressed up in traditional attire.