Devotees have started arriving at the Bara Shahid Dargah for the celebration of the Rottela Panduga which will be starting at Swarnala Cheruvu in the dargah surroundings from Saturday.
The four-day festival has been very popular among the pilgrims who come from remote areas in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and Odisha. Some come from foreign countries as well.
District Collector M. Janaki, during her inspection of the festival arrangements, ordered the officials to ensure that there would be no waiting in the queue lines for long as it would create problems both for the devotees and the district administration as well.
Accompanied by Joint Collector Imtiyaz, Town DSP Maqbul and other officials, the District Collector visited the dargah premises and pulled up some officials for the lack of proper sanitation. Orders were issued to clean the dargah surroundings from time to time during the course of the festival.
Cleaning of roads, drains and maintenance of public conveniences were posing major challenges during the festival time as huge crowds throng the festival venue, which has limited space in the Nellore tank surroundings.
According to the organisers, the Rottela Panduga will be held from the ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom) on the first day on Saturday.
This will be followed by ‘gandha mahotsavam’ (sandal paste festival) on Sunday, roti exchanging festivities on Monday and ‘tahadat fateha’ (concluding with the reading of the Quran) on Tuesday.
Though it was first popular as roti exchanging on a designated day, over the years this tradition has changed with the devotees taking up roti ceremony on the banks of Swarnala Cheruvu right from the first day itself. This was considered as a significant gesture on their part as a token of their wish fulfilment. Women devotees of all religions had been showing keen interest in exchanging rotis for the sake of fulfilment of their wishes for ‘good marriage alliances’, children, children’s health and education’ and so on.
The four-day festival begins with shahadath today
