Bhubaneswar : Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik flagged off the eleventh trip of senior citizens under the Baristha Nagarika Tirtha Yatra Yojana of the Odisha government from the Bhubaneswar railway station Sunday.
Wishing all the senior citizens on board a happy and safe journey, the Chief Minister flagged off the Kolkata-Kamakhya bound train at 12:45 pm Sunday afternoon. Altogether 1,000 pilgrims from Cuttack, Kendrapara, Puri, Jagatsinghpur and Khurda were on board the train.
The trip will end March 1, 2019.
Notably, Baristha Nagarika Tirtha Yatra Yojana was started in 2014 after the state Cabinet chaired by the Chief Minister had given its seal of approval. The BJD has promised the facility to the senior citizens in its election manifesto.
Accordingly, there were three trips under the yojana in 2016-17, while three pilgrimages undertaken in 2017-18 and in it was decided six pilgrimages would be undertaken in 2018-19. While the tenth trip was flagged off February 15, Friday’s tour is the eleventh one.
The state government had made around Rs 11 crore budgetary allocations for the purpose and the Odisha Tourism Department along with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) shouldered the responsibility jointly. The programme aims at giving the senior citizens who were deprived of pilgrimage facility, a chance to fulfill their desires. Till date, over 11,000 senior citizen pilgrims have reaped the benefits of the programme.