City temples gear up for Ram Navami this Sunday | Times of India
PATNA: Preparations are in full swing in various temples here for Ram Navami celebrations on Sunday. The arterial roads of the city will be filled with 32 shobha yatras in the evening and long queues are expected to be formed at temples in the morning.
The Mahavir temple near Patna Junction will open at 2am on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday and devotees will be allowed to make offerings till 7am. The devotees will enter the temple from the eastern gate. They will, however, not be allowed to carry prasad. The prayer service will be conducted by 10 additional priests from Ayodhya. The temple administration will deploy 250 private security guards to maintain the crowd and avoid any untoward incident. More than 2,000 police personnel, including women constables, will also be deployed by the district administration in and around the temple.
Temporary shades have also been erected on the temple campus where ‘sharbat’ will be offered to the devotees.
“Mahavir temple in Patna is second only to Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya when it comes to gathering of devotees on Ram Navami. Eight counters have been prepared for the sale of Naivedyam laddoo,” Mahavir Sthan Nyas Samiti secretary Acharya Kishore Kunal said.
“We started the tradition of organising reception for jhankis with an aim to instil sanskar in children. The floats depicting sequences from our scriptures and performances of folk dances leave a deep imprint on the hearts and minds of children, who then learn to follow these traditions,” Bankipore MLA Nitin Naveen, who is also the convenor of Shri Shri Ram Navami Shobhayatra Abhinandan Samiti, said.
Ram Navami will also mark the culmination of Chaitra Navratri, the nine days when Lord Ram and Goddess Durga are worshipped. It is also believed to be the day when Lord Ram was born.
