Bhubaneswar, July 19: The much-awaited light-and-sound show will take some more time to start at Dhauli peace pagoda on the city outskirts.

After a trial run of the show for officials and ministers at the historic monument on July 15, the state government now wants to develop a management protocol on the show and flow of visitors to the pagoda in the evening.

Once everything is ready, the tourism department will start the show with the government permission.

"We cannot specify a date at the moment. First we need to inform the public, hotel owners, tour operators and ensue better facilities with proper parking space near Dhauli. Once the tourists are informed and a proper mechanism is adopted, we can go for a start," tourism minister Ashok Chandra Panda told The Telegraph.

Stressing that the department was not eager to start the programmes in haste, Panda said: "We will only make an announcement about the show when everything is ready."

Earlier tourism officials had said that the show would be ready by Nabakalebar. The show, likely to be of 35 minutes, will be in three languages - Odia, Hindi and English.

Odia actor Bijay Mohanty and Bollywood actors Om Puri and Kabir Bedi will lend their voices to narrate the stories that are mainly based on the Kalinga war, emperor Ashok and his transformation from Chandashok to Dharmashok and the propagation of Buddhism from the soil of Kalinga.

Tourism secretary Arvind Padhee said: "For sitting arrangements, we need to prepare a nice place. As the rainy season is already on, it will take some time. Also, we have to work out a formula for the sustainability of the show."

Ajit Dash, a tourist from Bhadrak, said: "The Nabakalebar festival would have been the perfect occasion to start this show."

A senior tourism official said: "The show will be run by the Dhauli Development Council (DDC), a body which looks after the day-to-day activities of the monument and headed by the collector of Khurda. Once the management protocol is ready, the show will be handed over to DDC."

While the show has already undergone several technical trial runs, the mode of transportation of visitors to the hilltop and use of the bus terminal on the foothill is yet be decided.