It is useless and senseless to ask people about their opinien on the above incident who do not have any connection and can not do anything about it neigther they are any way connected to it.
Temple management is toatlly responsible for this. They should visit Thirupati Temple and follw the modus operandi. Being an IAS officer Mr. Mohapatra should have used his ADMINISTRATIVE ability by giving utmost priority to the smooth movement and disposal of pilgrims coming from various parts of the world. He had taken lot of steps to be appreciated. But ignored the safety of the poor people entering into a man made death trap : slippery floors, presense of more than required numbers of looters named PANDAs, lot of local vagabonds present whose intentions are bad whom police can easily identify, no system of que or batch,etc. etc.
Take Rs.500/- for instant visit, Rs.200/- for special que, Rs.50/- for a roll on que and free visitors should come in batches of 2000 to 5000 at a time depending on the temple administration survey. let the other people wait outside for days together for the DARSHAN instead of dying in STAMPADE!!!!!
I have been to Puri thrice. Everytime time I visited I felt bad with the organization and maintainance. The Jagannath temple authority should try to maintain the temple premises just as it is done in Tirupathi Balaji mandir. Equal number of devotees ponder both the places, but there is lot of difference between them. Even though such situations are not common, the authorities have to wake up and draw lines for the temple.
How about the fact that maybe the dead believed they can actually go to heaven by dying at this filthy and corrupt place that we all know as Jaggannath Temple. Those in the shadow of such perverse thoughts are none but the foolish indians, who, even after getting robbed by so called Pandas, flock to the very same filthy temple, year-after-year, at the very real risk of their life and limbss. Don't shed tears for the dead, they got what they deserved.
It is absolutely lack of proper arrangement by the Administration and the Police. These people very well aware of such huge rush likely to be there in view of last day of Kartik month. The temple administration should chalk out a concreate plan for the security as well as the other management for the future, so that such fearful incident can be avoided.
I am not surprised about it. When I visited this temple few months ago, what I found which was strange here was that they did two things that could precipitate a stampede. The temple authorities collect people (men, women and kids) as a bunch in the corridor at the sanctum-sanctorum and suddenly let them loose to see the deity and second thing is they kept the floors wet. These two factors I guess not surprisingly could trigger a stampede.
It was bound to happen, I had a similar experience on October 16,06. It appears to be absolutely mismanaged and huge crowd going in through a small gap ,was a horrifying exp.Never in my life I have come accross such an experience.Adding more problem I was told to make my small 6 year Kid to walk . It was god's blessing that we came alive with my old mother and wife.Something needs to be done to improve the situation immediately,otherwise negative impression will flow.
