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Hindus in the national capital Saturday heralded the new festive season by visiting temples and paying obeisance to the deities as part of the Navratra festival, even as stringiest security measures were put in place. Thousands of people started their nine-day long 'vrat' (fast) and visited several temples to worship goddess Durga. "Since early morning there were long queues of devotees and on the first day itself nearly 100,000 people, mainly women, visited the temple," said N.K. Sethi, in-charge of the Chattarpur temple in south Delhi. Spread over 70 acres of land, the temple will remain open 24 hours to accommodate hundreds of thousands of visitors during the nine-day festival. "We have made special arrangements for devotees and langar (community kitchen) have been arranged to provide free food to the visitors," Sethi told IANS. Extensive arrangements have also been made in the Manokamana Sidh temple in Kalkaji. Over 2.5 million people are expected to visit the temple in the next nine days. "All the adult members of our family are on fast. We went to the Chattarpur mandir this morning to worship," said Sevati Gupta, an east Delhi resident. The festival is dedicated to Hinduism's three main goddesses - Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Meanwhile, over 30 pandals are getting ready to celebrate Durga puja in the city. Like every year, pandals in Chittaranjan Park, Bangali Market and Sarojini Nagar are being readied with varied hues. The other revered festival Dussehra falls on Oct 2. With terror threats looming large over the capital, neither the Delhi Police nor the temple authorities are taking any chances on security arrangements. "Security has been beefed up at all major temples of the capital. PCR vans and police in plain clothes will keep a close eye," said a top Delhi police official adding close circuit cameras are also been used for better surveillance. "Every single visitor is being checked before being allowed inside the temple premises. Besides, 24 CCTVs are closely monitoring every single development in the Chattarpur temple," Seth said. Likewise, 12 cameras are monitoring the ISKCON temple. "Though we don't celebrate Navartri with much fervour, yet security mechanism has been alerted here," said a temple official. "Besides, regular police check-ups, 11 Central Industrial Security Force personnel and our private security personnel are keeping a close guard on the situation," he said.
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