Jagannath Temple corridor: an attempt to counter BJP’s Hindutva push ahead of elections

Odisha Chief Minister unveils heritage corridor around Jagannath Temple in Puri to counter BJP's Hindutva push.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday unveiled a sprawling heritage corridor around the Jagannath Temple in Puri, a project being seen as an attempt to counter the BJP’s Hindutva push ahead of the Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections later this year.

The Chief Minister reached Puri for the ceremony in the afternoon during the culmination of three-day-long rituals presided over by Puri’s titular king Dibyasingha Dev.

Over the next fortnight, the government will be facilitating the visit of around 10,000 villagers to the temple every day, apart from carrying out activities to spread awareness about the Jagannath culture, for which it has set aside a corpus of ₹177 crore.  

The heritage corridor is one of the two major temple projects the State government has undertaken in recent years — the other being the renovation of the Maa Samalai Temple at a cost of ₹200 crore in western Odisha town of Sambalpur. A grand inauguration ceremony is scheduled for January 27 there.

Both events come in the backdrop of the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, a cause championed by the BJP for years.

According to political analysts, the “lokarpan” (dedication) ceremony of the Shree Mandir Parikrama Prakalpa (SMPP), constructed at a cost of ₹800 crore within three years of its announcement, lived up to its hype created by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government.

Similar to the collection of bricks from devotees for the construction of a Ram temple during the Ayodhya movement in 1992, arpan rathas were taken out across Odisha leading up to the corridor inauguration ceremony, while rice and betel nuts were collected as contribution from villagers.