Lord Jagannath and his siblings are placed on huge chariots and taken out in procession every year during rath yatra in Puri. But with a huge crowd, accidents cannot be ruled out; they are just waiting to happen.

There have been several reports of people accidentally falling and being crushed under the huge wheels of Lord Jagannath’s chariot due to damaged axle and wheels. A person who was witness to such an accident was a Franciscan missionary, named Friar Odoric.

Odoric visited India in the 14th century and wrote about his visit to Puri in a journal, which he published in Europe later on.

In his journal, Odoric wrote in detail about the huge chariot of Lord Jagannath and how devotees “threw themselves” under the chariot wheels allowing themselves to be crushed.

According to Odoric, the people were offering themselves as sacrifice to the Lord. The European readers were shocked and horrified when they read this and began to associate the word Jagannath with “juggernaut”, a huge object that is out of control.

The Friar’s negative story of the human sacrifice spread throughout Europe and by the 19th century the word “juggernaut” began to be associated with a massive object without control, which destroyed everything in its path.

In 1960, one of the chariots got entangled with an electric pole resulting in damage to its axle. It was a tough time for the collector of Puri, who prayed to the Lord to solve the problem.

V.T. Patel, a senior divisional mechanical engineer of South Eastern Railway based at Khurda Road, was there as a visitor and approached the collector to repair and set right the movement of the chariot with the help of the railway mechanical staff.

The collector and district magistrate thought Patel was a godsend.

Within a few hours, the entangled chariot was freed from the electric wires and the broken axle and damaged wheels repaired.

The chariot moved forward. The public knew about the train, the roaring whistle of its engine but did not know about the engineer and engineering technique of the railways.

Since that year, the collector and district magistrate of Puri always requests the railway administration to depute mechanical staff and supervisors with screw jacks and tools to aid the movement of the chariots during the car festival in Puri.

A team of 30 railway artisan staff and two supervisors of the coaching depot, Puri, are engaged during rath yatra.

Alignment and relocation of the three chariots on the eve of rath yatra is also done by railway employees.

On the festival day, the entire team of supervisors and employees with jacks and tools follow the movement of all the three chariots in two trucks till these reach the Gundicha temple.

They also ensure devotees do not pull it off the linear trajectory. After reaching Gundicha temple, railway men help carpenters check and repair the chariots.

In 2010, during Gundicha yatra, the chariot of Goddess Subhadra broke down. Its axle broke near Gundicha temple. It was repaired with the help of railway staff.

Like previous years, apart from 82 special trains, the railway will be providing trained and dedicated workforce of 36 employees and supervisors, breakdown materials such as 25 tonnes of screw jacks and wooden planks, etc. as assistance to the temple administration.