Around 2.5 quintals of stale food seized to maintain hygiene during Odisha’s Bali Jatra

Cuttack, November 6: Cuttack: Odisha’s annual historic event ‘Bali Jatra’ kicked off where Health Squad of Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) seized around 2.5 quintals of stale food and destroyed during the ongoing Bali Jatra fair to ensure proper hygiene is maintained in preparation and no stale food is served to visitors during the festival. 

The squads have been instructed to conduct raids at food joints at regular intervals. Officials of the Health Squad of Cuttack Municipal Corporation conducted the raid at various kiosks selling chat, dahibara, thunkapuri and foodstuff, according to sources.

Worth mentioning, the famous Bali Jatra is known for its delicious food like ‘thunka poori’, ‘dahi-bara aludam’ ‘chakuli and mutton kasa’.

A highest of over five lakh visitors had thronged the Bali Jatra on the second day on Sunday. The annual Bali Yatra festival began on Saturday on the bank of river Mahanadi close to Barabati Fort in Cuttack. The fair provides the right platform to budding artists to display their creativity before lakhs of visitors coming to the biggest fair of Odisha. The week-long festival will continue till November 10.

Over 1,500 makeshift stalls have been set up on the two fair grounds on the sprawling Mahanadi riverbed and the adjoining Killa Padia. Special pavilions of National Pallishree Mela, Gandhi Shilpa Bazaar and ORMAS-guided self-help groups of women and differently-abled people are the star attractions at the festival. The stalls have everything from pottery, ethnic, jewellery, costly metals and local spices to house hold products and electronic gadgets.

Apart from this, handicraft, stone carving, wood carving, pattachitra, appliqué and terracotta are also available in the fair.

For food lovers, various Odia delicacies are available at Pallishree mela and it is a great opportunity for visitors to taste all these dishes at one place. Looking at the expected footfall on the festival grounds over the week, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) has taken up the responsibility to keep the festival site clean and hygienic.

Similarly, the police have made elaborate arrangements to contain crime and maintain law and order at the festival grounds. Fire brigade personnel equipped fire tenders and other firefighting measures are also deployed at the festival grounds to meet any eventuality.