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Puri Rath Yatra stampede: Has state government learned its lesson yet?

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01st July, 2025 20:36 IST

A day after three people were killed and 50 others injured in a stampede near the Gundicha temple in Puri, Odisha on Sunday, 29 June, thousands of devotees on Monday were making a beeline for a darshan of the sibling deities — Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Lord Jagannath.

With important Rath Yatra-related rituals like 'Sandhya Darshan' (4 July), 'Bahuda Yatra' or return chariot festival (5 July), 'Suna Besha' (6 July) and 'Niladri Bije' (8 July) yet to take place, the government should be prepared to face yet another test. Its success or otherwise in handling these huge events will show if it has learned any lessons from its recent blunders.

Also, this appearance of normalcy takes nothing away from the terrible lapses on the part of the administration on Sunday, the most glaring being its failure to manage a crowd of over 10 lakh devotees and tourists who descended on the temple town, about 79 km from state capital Bhubaneswar, from all parts of the country and even abroad.

The situation was compounded by the blatant promotion of VIP culture by the state’s ruling BJP government led by chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi, which laid out of a red carpet for industrialist Gautam Adani, who took part in the yatra with his family on 28 June when the chariots bearing the divine siblings — which had failed to reach their final destination at Sri Gundicha temple, about 2.5 km from the 12th-century Shri Jagannath temple at the other end of Grand Road (Bada Danda) on 27 June, the first day of the yatra — had to be drawn again. 

Odisha’s maiden BJP government had wanted this Rath Yatra — the state’s showcase religio-cultural event for decades — to be as grand as the Maha Kumbh which ended in Prayagraj (Allahabad) in February. In a horrifyingly ironic way, it has matched the Maha Kumbh in the stampede department, at least.

In a face-saving move, the government has shifted the Puri collector and superintendent of police, replacing them with seemingly more experienced officers, and also deputed two senior IAS and IPS officers to supervise the conduct of other rituals connected with the nine-day festival.

Over 600 people fall ill during Puri Rath Yatra, many admitted to hospitals

Nonetheless, the angry buzz around the tragedy refuses to die down. To begin with, it was unprecedented that not a single chariot was able to reach Sri Gundicha on day one, 27 June. “I don’t remember when this happened last. Nandighosha, Lord Jagannath’s chariot, was pulled well after sunset and could move barely a few metres from the lion’s gate (singha dwar) of the Jagannath temple. Excuses like overcrowding and chariots negotiating too many diversions are just not acceptable,” said Rina Mohanty, who makes it a point to visit Puri during the Rath Yatra.

The VIP treatment accorded to Adani has triggered a debate too, with the Opposition Congress accusing the government of prioritising the industrialist over the ‘lord of the universe’, whose journey to Sri Gundicha the yatra celebrates. Senior Congress leader and former Pradesh Congress Committee president Prasad Harichandan alleged that the delay in drawing the chariots on Friday, the first day of the yatra, was deliberate and intended to allow the Adani family to draw them.

“The chariots were halted midway on the Grand Road with the entire administration watching helplessly. Talk about Gautam Adani and his family’s visit to participate in the Rath Yatra was already on. The delay could well have been orchestrated to facilitate the Adani family’s participation,” said Harichandan, demanding a judicial inquiry by the sitting district and sessions judge of Puri into the gross mismanagement of the yatra by the ruling party.

Problems began right from the get go when a group of journalists from Bhubaneswar who visited the temple town to cover the event with valid passes issued by the administration were not allowed inside the security cordon. Some of them allegedly faced misbehaviour from security personnel and even sustained injuries.

The inordinate delay in drawing the chariots on 27 June despite a massive police presence led to over 600 devotees taking ill and being rushed to Puri district hospital. While some felt short of breath in the crowd, others fell and sustained injuries.

Negligence, mismanagement that led to Puri temple stampede inexcusable: Congress

“This was a warning signal for the government. It should have found ways to ensure better crowd management. However, the government continued to blunder and the next day when the chariots were drawn again, the entire focus was on Gautam Adani and his family. An inordinately large number of cordon passes were issued apparently to please BJP leaders and their followers. The police had to focus more on facilitating VIP movement than managing the crowd. Stampede-like situations are unavoidable under such circumstances,” said former MLA Dr Lalatendu Mohapatra.

While Congress MP Satpagiri Ulaka and party leader Arabinda Das lambasted the promotion of VIP culture by the BJP government during the yatra, accusing it of turning the state’s biggest cultural show into a political event, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) spokesperson Lenin Mohanty wondered what government bigwigs were doing when people were dying and being injured. “The top leaders were there but they just watched helplessly. The government had made tall claims about conducting a fool-proof yatra but what happened was just the opposite,” Mohanty said.

The stampede took place in the early hours of 29 June outside Sri Gundicha temple where the chariots of Jagannath (Nandighosha), Balabhadra (Taldhwaja) and Subhadra (Darpdalan) had been parked, awaiting rituals following which the idols would have been carried into the shrine in ceremonial procession.

Lakhs of people visit Sri Gundicha every year during Rath Yatra for a darshan of the deities on their chariots, considered to be particularly auspicious. However, this time round, the crowd was too massive and there was hardly any police arrangement to regulate the flow of devotees.

Sushama Sharma, a 60-year-old devotee from Bhubaneswar who was outside Sri Gundicha that day, described the chaos. “The security cordon was too narrow to begin with and there was no one to guide the devotees on how to enter and exit. The situation worsened when two trucks laden with puja materials entered the crowded area without warning.  People started running in all directions with some falling down. It was really scary,” she said.  

While Majhi ordered an inquiry into the stampede and announced ex-gratia payments of Rs 25 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased, two of them women, the government immediately shifted Puri collector Siddhartha Shankar Swain and SP Vineet Agarwal, to be replaced by Khurda collector Chanchal Rana and STF DIG Pinak Mishra respectively. Senior IAS officer and former Puri collector Arvind Agrawal and senior IPS officer S.K. Priyadarshi were also sent to the temple town to ensure order during the remaining rituals connected with the yatra.

An embarrassed Majhi offered apologies to devotees. “My government and I seek forgiveness from all Jagannath devotees. We express our condolences to the families of devotees who lost their lives... pray to Mahaprabhu Jagannath to grant them the strength to bear this profound sorrow,” Majhi said in a post on X. Describing the negligence as “unpardonable”, he ordered an immediate probe into the security lapses.

Former chief minister and leader of opposition Naveen Patnaik, who is recovering from a surgery, lambasted the government for its mismanagement of the yatra. “Today’s stampede, occurring just a day after the abysmal failure of crowd management during the Rath Yatra that left hundreds injured, exposes the government’s glaring incompetence in ensuring a peaceful festival for devotees,” Patnaik said.

Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi also expressed concern over the incident. “This tragedy is a serious warning — for such large events, security arrangements and crowd management preparations must be taken seriously and thoroughly reviewed. Protecting lives is paramount, and no lapses in this responsibility are acceptable,” he said in a post on X.

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