Puri: Puri’s Jagannath Temple will remain open for devotees even on Saturdays and the timing for the darshan has been extended by two hours.
Shri Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) chief administrator Krishan Kumar virtually on Wednesday met with the Puri Collector Samarth Verma and five members of the managing committee of the temple where the decision of both increasing the darshan time and opening the temple on Saturday was passed.
“The decision to extend the timing was taken to allow more devotees to have darshan of the Lord and the gates will remain open from 7am to 7 pm,” said temple administrator Ajay Jena adding that on Sunday the temple will be closed for sanitization.
Jena also added that on September 10 the temple will be closed for Ganesh Chathurthi and on September 17 the same will be closed for Viswakarma Puja.
It can be recalled that earlier SJTA kept the temple closed on weekends for sanitization.
The temple which remained closed since April 24 due to the second wave of the pandemic had opened for the devotees in phases from August.
“It has been mandatory for the devotees to wear masks both inside and outside the temple. The devotees will have to produce the certificate of two doses of COVID vaccination or RT PCR negative certificate of the test conducted within 96 hours of entering the premises,” said the sources of SJTA.
The SJTA sources also stated that the devotees will be allowed to enter the premises after sanitization from the northeast side of the temple and exit through the north gate.
