Puri temple to have own FM radio station

If everything goes as per plan, the world famous Jagannath temple in Puri will soon have its own FM radio station. The decision to set up the new private radio station was taken at a managing committee of the temple meeting, held at Puri recently.

“We will set up our own radio station to disseminate information on lord Jagannath. The proposed project would be commissioned at a cost of around Rs 4 crore,” temple’s chief administrator Arvind Padhee said.

The radio station will come up on the premises of the temple office at Puri. The project is likely to take shape after the end of Rath Yatra in July.

In the first phase, the FM radio station which will be set up at a cost of Rs 5 crore and will have programmes for eight hours daily—four hours in the morning and four in the evening—consisting of “bhajans” (devotional songs) recorded by prominent singers both from within the state and outside.

Since long, thousands of bhajans about the Puri temple as well as the three deities of the famous shrine—Jagannath, Balabhadra and their sister Subhadra—have already been recorded by specialist bhajan singers within the state like the late Bhikari Bal. A number of leading playback singers from Bollywood have also sung bhajans in Odia about the Puri temple.

Besides, information on lord Jagannath and rituals of the 12th century shrine would soon be available on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. National Informatics Centre (NIC), a central government institution which provides e-government/e- governance solutions in the country, is giving finishing touches to the design and contents of the dedicated webpage on the reigning deities of Odisha.

“We would soon launch the page on lord Jagannath on Facebook and Twitter. Since the social networking sites are being browsed by countless people across the globe, this will help spread Jagannath culture across the globe,” Padhee said.