The day of Shravan Panchami on 3rd Monday of Shravan plus Nag Panchami caused chaos and panic near the Nagchandreshwar Mahadev Temple, in Ujjain. Particularly, due to the large number of people, there was a strain on darshan arrangements and devotees were reportedly suffering from illnesses just because of the overcrowding.
This escalated around the road leading to the Nagchandreshwar Temple in front of the Bada Ganesh Temple. The number of the people still increased and the gathering was getting unmanageable. A number of people complained of feeling unwell, leading authorities to rush out ambulances at the scene. Those whose health deteriorated were taken to hospital for medical attention.
In the mayhem, some followers even tried to skirt the barricades to find a route unoccupied and proceed on. Police officers and security personnel were called in to help handle the crowd and to ensure that barricades didn’t fall over.
The disturbances also led to anger against those arrangements to serve darshan on the auspicious day amongst the devotees many of which criticized the arrangements. A few devotees apparently turned down the opportunity to be blessed with Darshan after waiting for some hours at the paramasiva Swami’s home.
One devout person, who came from Pune, complained that there was a shortage of cordial arrangements to deal with the huge crowd. He cited that he had been at the queue since 1am but was still not able to have darshan.
This day is a special day for the ministry and Nag Panchami is even more significant as it is a time when the Nagchandreshwar Shrine is opened for darshan and many devotees flock to the shrine. This year’s turnout was notable in highlighting the difficulty of crowd control arrangements during big religious events and the safe and orderly movement of religious mobs.