Devotees protest against discriminatory order in temple

A large number of devotees who had come to Shakumbhari Devi, Shaktipeeth in district Saharanpur, from other districts demonstrated on Monday against administration’s discriminatory attitude of demanding a negative RTPCR test report from them to ensure entry to the shrine and not from those coming from Saharanpur.

Despite Covid surge again a good number of devotees are coming to the shrine during the ongoing Navratri. However to put a check on the Covid situation the district administration has made an RT-PCR negative test report of 72 hours mandatory for the devotees arriving from districts other than Saharanpur.

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On Monday the situation turned volatile at the temple when hundreds of pilgrims who had come from other districts were denied entry to the temple in the absence of a negative RT PCR test report. The pilgrims charged the administration of adopting discriminatory attitude towards all those coming from other districts while those who are from Saharanpur were allowed to go without any test report.

After a protest at the checking post to the temple the devotees went to the nearby Primary Health Center and demanded for Covid testing. There they were told by the staff that only Rapid Antigen Test could be done.