Keonjhar: After remaining out of bound for visitors and devotees for over 10 months due to COVID-19 outbreak, famous Tarini temple at Ghatagaon village in Koenjhar district will reopen January 18.
The Maa Tarini Thakurani Temple Trust Board has issued guidelines to ensure devotees’ free and safe darshan of the goddess at the temple.
The temple will open at 6:00 am Monday, but darshan of goddess will be restricted to two phases — from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm and from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm. The servitors of the temple and their family members will visit the shrine between 8:00 am and 9:00 am.
Children below 10 years have been restricted to visit the shrine. Devotees will enter the shrine from gate no- 3 where there is a sanitisation facility and exit from gate no-4. People coming to the shrine for puja of their new vehicles will enter from gate no-5, the temple authorities informed.
Tonsuring of children has also been stopped for the time being. Similarly, there will be no cooked prasad on offer inside the temple.
At any given time, there will be no more than 25 to 30 devotees inside the shrine. At the same time, taking coconuts, flowers, bhoga, lamps and incense sticks have also been restricted. The shops inside the temple will remain closed till further orders by the district administration.
The use of masks and maintaining social distancing will be mandatory inside and outside the temple. Besides, barricades have been installed to ensure proper entry into the shrine. For crowd management, there would be deployment of police officials and volunteers.
PNN