Odissi dancer caught on wrong foot for posting Lords’ Gundicha temple pics

Bhubaneswar: Pictures of Lord Jagannath and his siblings from inside the sanctum sanctorum of centuries old temples in Odisha’s Pilgrim Town have gone viral in the recent past raising serious questions over security arrangements in the religious places. The latest to create a furore is that of the deities at Adapa Mandap of Gundicha temple, posted on the Facebook account of Odissi dancer Sanket Mishra.

Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) PRO Laxmi Narayan Pujapanda said that the matter will be probed and appropriate action taken against the person concerned.

Mishra, who is a student of filmmaking in Satyajit Ray Films and Television Institute in Kolkata, is not new to controversy. He had created ripples with ‘Odissi in Skullcap’, a performance on Ahe Neelashaila (Oh Bluestone Lord), where he had depicted the devotion of Salabega for Lord Jagannath, in the City of Joy recently.

The picture of Gundicha Temple posted in 2013, however, has been removed from Sanket’s FB account.

When Odisha Sun Times contacted Sanket for his reaction on this issue, he refuted the allegation.

“The picture hasn’t been captured by me. I had shared it in 2013 under private setting accessible only to people on my friends list. It is an act of a hacker. I am an ardent devotee of the Lord, as I hail from the Holy Town. I had no oblique motive behind sharing the picture. I feel it’s an attempt to malign my image,” he told OST adding the same has been shared with SJTA.

In September last year, a woman from West Bengal had also uploaded a picture of Lord Jagannath and his siblings at Ratna Singhasan inside Gundicha temple.

It was apparently taken during the sojourn of the deities at the temple during the nine-day Ratha Jatra and uploaded on June 28 last.

Following repeated incidents of alleged security lapses, the SJTA authorities put out notification banning entry of camera phones inside the temple. Besides, special hologram-affixed phones were also distributed among servitors. However, it was withdrawn later.