Ahead of Raksha Bandhan, parcels for dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim decline

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, July 29

With the Covid threat still looming large, women and girls have opted to send rakhis to their brothers via couriers. A testimony to this is the fact that the number of parcels received in post offices here has doubled when compared to the last year’s number.

However, this time around, couriers addressed to jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh have witnessed a significant decline from 1,000 couriers per day last year to less than 60 this year. “The dera followers come from lower sections of the society, and a majority of them are either daily wagers or small shopkeepers. Hit hard by the pandemic, the followers are struggling to make ends meet amid the economic slowdown. Hence, they are not enthusiastic this time to spend on sending rakhis or raksha bandhan wishes to pitaji. I, too, have not sent him rakhi this time around,” said a dera follower, who runs a grocery shop in Jhajjar city.

Another dera follower from Kalanaur town here said health safety amid the rising number of Covid cases was one of the major reasons why the followers were refraining from buying rakhis.

“More than 25,000 parcels of rakhis were received for the jailed dera chief last year, and the average number of parcels received per day was over 1,000. However, this year, merely 200 rakhi parcels have come to date. Our employees had to work extra time to deliver the parcels in time last year, but this time there is no burden on us,” said Vikas, sub-postmaster at a post office in Sunaria Kalan village.

On the other hand, the Department of Posts has been receiving around 1,000 rakhi parcels every day for the past one week, as against 500 parcels last year. Given the surge in the number of parcels, the department has decided to deliver the parcels even on weekends so that people could get rakhis in time, said DV Saini, superintendent of post office in Rohtak Division.

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