No details of passes maintained by Puri district administration

In response to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Puri district administration has replied that that it has no information about the beneficiaries of ‘cordon passes’, issued during the Rath Yatra this year. It has been alleged that hundreds of passes were issued to people authorizing them to go near the chariots cordoned off by police.

It has been informed by the Puri district administration that the beneficiaries of the passes included some judicial officers, ministers, MLAs, bureaucrats and police officials though no register has been maintained regarding the details of the passes issued.

Indiscriminate issue of ‘cordon passes’ can lead to crown and a possibility of stampede. In the current security environment, the government had sounded terror alert during Rath Yatra and the possibility of an unscrupulous element getting a pass increases with no records of pass allotment being maintained.

While the applicant has maintained that the CCTV cameras footage and photographs were denied to him on the pretext that no photos or videos were shot, the SP (Puri) Anup Kumar Sahoo has reportedly informed the media that CCTV cameras footages cannot be shared with the public.