Thanks to pleasant weather in Ranchi as more than 45,000 devotees thronged Pahari Mandir for offering Jalabhishek to lord Shiva on the very first Monday of this festive season. To tackle the increasing number of devotees during Shravani Mela, argha system was introduced for the first time at Pahari Mandir on the lines of Baba Temple in Deoghar. Arghya system enables the pilgrims to offer ‘jalabhisek’ from a distance through a pipeline without actually touching the ‘shivling’ (idol).
“The response was quite encouraging for the whole day as the system was lauded by everyone coming to the temple and all the VIPs, despite having a separate arrangement for them, chose to offer jalbhishek through argha system,” said treasurer of Pahari Mandir Vikas Samity Hari Jalan. According to our estimate, over 45 thousand devotees, both men and women offered jalbhishek to lord shiva, which all time high on the first Modnay, added Jalan.
“Thanks to the clear weather and the district administration which ordered to close the schools on Monday enabling more and more women to visit the temple this Monday,” Jalan said.
Even though darshan continued for over 12 hours from 3 am to 3 pm, crowed was managed easily by the volunteers of Mandir Vikas Samiti as well as the district administration.
“It became very easy for us to control the crowed after the introduction of argha system and we are now confident that we can even control a crowed of over 1 lakh people easily at any point of time,” said another volunteer Vinay Poddar who was deputed to manage the crowd.
Unlike Baba temple in Deoghar, four arghya have been arranged at Pahari Mandir which enables several devotees to offer jalabhishek at a time preventing any kind of rush inside the main temple. The district administration has also made fool proof security arrangements both inside and outside the temple complex at Pahari Mandir to avoid any untoward instances during the festive season.
Meanwhile, more than 1.25 lakh devotees offered jalabhishek to Baba Temple in Deoghar as expected by the district officials while more than 30,000 devotees could not offer prayers due to excessive crowed on Monday. The queue of devotees for Baba darshan went on to over 12 km crossing the Dadwa River.