Akhada Parishad to hold meeting at Baghambari Gaddi Mutt on Jan 1

PRAYAGRAJ: A meeting of the Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP), the top decisionmaking body of the 13 recognised Hindu monastic orders of the country, will be held in Baghambari Gaddi Mutt of Sangam city on Friday (January 1).

Representatives from all the 13 akharas (monastic orders) would be present at the meeting scheduled to start from 11 am, ABAP chief Narendra Giri said.

He said that ahead of the meeting all ABAP officials will visit the Magh Mela area along with officials of the Uttarakhand government, he said. The ABAP has also invited Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on the occasion and though Rawat is unlikely to come, officials of his government would be arriving to see preparations done by Yogi Adityanath government so that they could replicate the same at Haridwar Kumbh. The Haridwar Kumbh is set to begin from January though the first Shahi snan, the bathing ritual in the Ganga by saints, would happen on March 11.

“We had got the information that the Uttarakhand CM is unwell and we have prayed for his health at the Bade Hanumanji temple here at the Sangam. As he won’t be able to come personally on January 1, some of the officials of his administration would be coming to see the magnitude and method of preparations put in place by the UP government to organise Magh Mela2021 amid the corona crisis”, said Giri.

“If things could be provided here at Prayagraj, why can’t it be done at Haridwar too especially when the numbers of corona positive patients are declining,” ABAP chief said.