Puri: With the inventory of the inner treasury of Ratna Bhandar scheduled to begin from April 13, a preparatory meeting was held at Shree Jagannath Temple office in Odisha’s Puri town on Sunday.
Chief Administrator of Shree Jagannath Temple Arabinda Padhee, Puri Collector Dibya Jyoti Parida, SP Prateek Singh, along with other officials and servitor representatives, reviewed the arrangements and coordination required to ensure smooth and systematic execution of the process.
Chairman of the high-level committee on the Ratna Bhandar, Justice Biswanath Rath, joined the meeting virtually.
The Bhitara Bhandar exercise will be paused on April 14 due to Maha Bishuba Sankranti. It will resume on April 16 and continue until April 18. The inventory of precious ornaments and jewels in Bahara Bhandar (outer treasury) of Shree Jagannath Temple’s Ratna Bhandar, which concluded on April 11, saw an increase in the total number of items compared to the last count conducted in 1978.
The high-level committee overseeing the process found 147 ornaments in the Bahara Bhandar, up from 118 recorded during the previous inventory nearly five decades ago. All items, including both gold and silver ornaments, were found to be in good condition. “All the ornaments are in good condition and this has been verified by the temple’s Baniya sevayats who are a part of the inventory process,” Justice Rath said.
The committee was informed that three ornaments, which could not be located during the counting, are kept in the Bhitara Bhandar.
The Bahara Bhandar counting, which began on April 8, involved detailed verification lasting over seven hours each day. It was conducted in the presence of committee members, temple goldsmiths, gemologists, and officials from the Reserve Bank of India. Every item was meticulously documented using digital photography, videography, and 3D scanning to create a comprehensive digital catalogue that will simplify future inventories.
The last full inventory was carried out between May 13 and July 23, 1978, by a nine-member committee headed by then Governor B D Sharma. It recorded a total of 454 gold articles weighing 12,838 bharis (one bhari equals 10 grams) and 293 silver articles weighing 22,153 bharis across both the outer and inner chambers.