The Uttar Pradesh Police (UPP) has raised a special force clad in saffron dhoti-kurta to man security inside important temples, which are under constant terrorist threat, across the state.
Devotees at famous Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were in for a pleasant surprise when they saw police personnel managing the security inside the sanctum of the temple donning saffron dhoti-kurta.
The security at the world-famous Kashi Vishwanath temple was spruced up after serial blasts by terrorists in 2006. The three-layered security is divided into yellow, green and red zones. The red zone covers the most challenging job to provide security at sanctum sanctorum and inside temple.
In fact, the temple priest and devotees often objected to the presence of the police personnel in traditional khaki attire inside the ‘Garbha Griha’ (sanctum sanctorum) during early morning live ‘Mangal Aarti’, ‘Rudrabhishek’ and routine darshan. There were incidents in the past of rude behaviour by khaki-clad men with priests and scuffle with devotees over crowd management and security issues.
“Presence of police personnel inside the temple always irked devotees as they used to be constantly pushed by them to remain in queue and follow security drills,” pointed out priest Sri Kant Mishra. Kashi Vishwanath Temple Management Committee office-bearers had raised this issue when a delegation from the PMO recently visited to pay obeisance to Baba Vishwanath and discuss other issues related to the temple.
Though the PMO delegation had rejected the demand for removal of police from the sanctum sanctorum due to security reasons they assured to make the men in khaki mend their ways and deal devotees in a friendly manner. The Varanasi police selected about two dozen Hindu police personnel, including women cops, on the directions of the PMO and gave them special training. They were trained in marshal arts, public dealing and crowd management without interfering in daily rituals and causing any hindrance in ‘darshan’ by large number of devotees.
To make them devotee-friendly, their uniform was changed to take the fear out of mind of visiting devotees. They were asked to don saffron dhoti-kurta. Women were also made to drape in yellow sarees. Initially, about 22 police personnel are being posted in new attire in three shifts at the temple since Monday to man the security inside the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
“The experiment is successful. We are also giving them training in different languages like Telugu, Gujarati etc to greet and communicate in the language of visiting devotees,” said the Varanasi SSP R.K. Bhardwaj.
The temple Priest Sri Kant Mishra said that they are happy with the new security arrangement. “We are surprised to find sea-change in the attitude of new set of cops posted inside the temple towards devotees. They now help them to perform rituals with ease and guide them till the end,” said Mishra
The DGP spokesperson Rahul Srivastava claimed that the same experiment may also be extended to Ayodhya and Mathura if their management committees made similar requests.
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 "Kashi Vishwanath temple")
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