Hola Mohalla fair begins at Dera Baba Vadbhag Singh in Una

UNA, FEBRUARY 27

The 11-day-long Hola Mohalla fair today began at Dera Baba Vadbhag Singh shrine at Mairi village of the district. A large number of devotees, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi pay reverence at the shrine every year. The fair will culminate on the midnight intervening March 9 and 10.

The devotees pay obeisance to the Narsingh deity and Baba Vadbhag Singh at the shrine. They later travel 1 km towards the Darshani Khad, which has been renamed as ‘Charan Ganga’, to take a dip in holy water. Here, they discard their old clothes and wear new ones, which, it is believed, helps in shedding their mental illnesses and depression at the shrine and moving out with a healthy mind and body.

The fair ends with the holy Nishan Sahib being hoisted on the premises of the shrine on Holi and during the preceding midnight, holy ‘Prasad’is distributed among devotees. Since devotees enter the state in double-decked trucks and tractors, the administration has imposed a ban on travelling in such vehicles. The devotees will have the facility to park their vehicles at barriers and board waiting buses for the to-and-fro journey to the shrine, said DC Raghav Sharma, adding that the administrations in Ropar, Nawanshahr and Hoshiarpur had been informed.

Meanwhile, elaborate security arrangements have been made to ensure that the fair goes on smoothly. The area around the shrine has been divided into 10 sectors, each under the control of a sector magistrate and a Sector Police Officer, while the ADC has been designated as the Mela Officer and the ASP as the Mela Police Officer.

The DC said setting up ‘langars’ near the shrine had been prohibited without the written consent of the ADC. He said the use of loudspeakers, playing brass bands, drums and other musical instruments was banned too.