Bhubaneswar, May 5 (PTI) Odisha Law Minister Prithiviraj Harichandan on Monday said that according to an interim investigation report, no sacred wood from the Puri Jagannath temple was used to make the idols installed at a temple in Digha in neighbouring West Bengal, as was alleged by various quarters.

The titular king of Puri, Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb, and the Odisha government also urged the authorities in West Bengal to refrain from using ‘dham' with newly built Jagannath temple at Digha and stop projecting the sea there as “Mahodadhi” (the great ocean).

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Though both seas at Digha and Puri are the same, the Bay of Bengal, the one at Puri is called ‘Mahodadhi' as the Odisha town with the 12th-century Jagannath shrine is considered a sacred place of pilgrimage.

The law minister also threatened to take legal steps against the West Bengal government if it does not stop referring to the Digha temple as a “Jagannath Dham”.

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The alleged theft and use of sacred wood of the Puri temple in crafting idols of the shrine at Digha and the treating the West Bengal temple as a “Jagannath Dham” by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who inaugurated it last week, sparked a huge controversy.

The law minister asked the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) of Puri on May 2 to investigate the matter. The administration of the temple in Puri is under the law department of the Odisha government.

The SJTA on Sunday questioned a senior servitor as part of its investigation. The servitor, 'Daitapati Nijog' secretary Ramakrushna Dasmohapatra, attended and supervised the consecration ceremony at the Digha temple in presence of Banerjee on April 30.

'Daitapati Nijog' is a group of servitors considered bodyguards of Lord Jagannath.

“I have received the interim report from the SJTA chief administrator and the state's law department secretary. It was found during the investigation that the senior Daitapati servitor had crafted the idols of Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Lord Jagannath in Odisha and taken them to Digha,” the minister told reporters.

“But, those idols were made by a carpenter in Bhubaneswar by using neem wood and not the sacred wood stored in Daru Gruha (wood store room) of the Puri temple as alleged. We have verified it from the Bhubaneswar carpenter who crafted the idols,” he said.

It was alleged that some Puri servitors used leftover ‘neem' wood from the 2015 ‘Nabakalebara' (new form) ritual to make the idols for the shrine in Digha. 'Nabakalebara' is a ritual held every 12 or 19 years, during which the wooden bodies of the three idols are changed at the Puri temple.

The claim about the use of wood from the Puri temple came after Dasmohapatra's interview was telecast by a Bengali news channel.

On this, the minister said, “He (Dasmohapatra) lied. He has admitted during questioning by the SJTA that it was a slip of the tongue and he had no such bad intention. Still, the SJTA has issued him a show cause notice asking him to reply within seven days from Sunday.”

Apart from Dasmohapatra, who is known as Rajesh Daitapati in West Bengal, over 50 other servitors from the Puri temple reportedly attended the consecration ceremony at the Digha temple.

Harichandran and the Gajapati Maharaja also appealed to the West Bengal government not to use the title ‘dham' with the Jagannath temple of Digha.

“They (the SJTA and the law department secretary) have made certain recommendations after taking the opinions of various groups of servitors at the Puri temple. None of them objected to a Shree Jagannath temple anywhere in the country. But the title dham cannot be used arbitrarily and all sea cannot be called ‘Mahodadhi',” Harichandan said.

The minister said the state administration has decided to request the West Bengal government to withdraw the dham title from the temple and stop projecting the sea at Digha as ‘Mahodadhi'.

“If they (West Bengal government) does not respond to our request, we will be forced to take legal recourse,” Harichandan said.

Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb, who is the first servitor of the Lord Jagannath and also chairman of the Shree Jagannath Temple Managing Committee, also urged the Digha temple authorities not to refer the Digha temple as dham.

“I sincerely urge the authorities of Digha Jagannatha Temple to desist from naming Digha Jagannatha Temple as ‘Jagannath Dham' or as ‘Jagannath Dham Cultural Centre',” Deb said in a statement.

In his first response on the issue, he said that no place other than Puri can be called dham as "Puri is the eternal Holy Abode of the Supreme Lord -- Shree Purushottama-Jagannatha."

Disrespect to these traditions and heritage will hurt the religious sentiments of countless devotees of the Lord around the world, the titular king said, referring to several “slokas” from scriptures to justify his statement.

The law minister said that the SJTA would soon issue guidelines for various Jagannath temples across the country and an SOP form the servitors of Puri temple to avoid confusion and controversies in future.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)