Lord Jagannath is bound by the ropes of affection of His followers. It is believed that those who pull or just touch the ropes of the Lord’s chariot during the car festival are absolved of all sins, which attaches a special significance to the sacred cords.

This year around, locally made ropes will be pulled by millions of devotees.

As per tradition, four long and sturdy ropes are attached to each of the three chariots of Lord Jagannath and his siblings, Balabhadra and Subhadra. Earlier exported from the Kerala coir board, the ropes have been provided by the Orissa Cooperative Coir Corporation this year.

Made at Birpratappur near Chandanpur in Puri district, each of the ropes is 220ft long, eight inches in diameter and weighs about 140kg. These are the result of eight to 10 hours of daily hard work by around 300 employees.

The coir corporation handed over these ropes to the temple administration on June 22, which was much before the scheduled date.

According to the temple authorities, the hawsers brought from Kerala were worth as much as a technical committee’s visit to Kerala, to supervise the rope making, would have cost.

“Previously, the quality of the ropes made here was not on par with those procured from Kerala. But over the years the quality has improved considerably. That is the reason why we ordered all the ropes from the Orissa coir corporation,” said Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, chief administrator of Puri temple.

For the last three years, temple authorities had been using the ropes made by the state coir corporation on an experimental basis. Last year, all the four ropes attached to the chariot of Subhadra had been provided by this state-run group.

“Ropes from the state coir corporation proved to be equally effective last year,” said Sudarshan Mekap, caretaker of the temple.

The ropes tend to get damaged during Bahuda (return journey) when the chariots take the dakshina moda (turn southwards) from the Mausi Maa temple.

“The process is carried out with the help of one rope, so sometimes it gets torn apart. This is for the first time that locally made ropes will be used. We hope it would prove strong enough to sustain the pressure of tugging, or else it would cause embarrassment for the entire state,” said Binod Tripathy, a local resident.

Officials of the state coir corporation expect that the quality will turn out to be as good as the ropes from Kerala.

“We have provided ropes at half of price of what they earlier used to buy and the quality of the ropes have been thoroughly checked,” said Bipin Kumar Mishra, manager of finance, Orissa Cooperative Coir Corporation.

He also said all the people involved in rope-making followed a “chaste, vegetarian diet while working since the rath yatra is closely associated with the sentiments of millions of people”.

After the festival is over, the ropes will be put to use for various sacred purposes.