The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to consider a plea challenging the Kerala High Court’s ruling in favor of the Guruvayur Sri Krishna temple administration, which decided to discontinue the ancient ritual of ‘udayasthamana pooja’ at Ekadashi , reports PTI.

A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Rajesh Bindal issued notices to the Guruvayur Devaswom steering committee, the Kerala government and others in response to the plea against the December 7 order.

However, the court said the temple’s daily pooja schedule posted on its website should not be changed. “We cannot intervene now. We will send notice to the other party. Prima facie, we are satisfied,” the bench remarked.

Udayasthamana pooja is a series of worship rituals performed in temples throughout the day, from sunrise (udaya) to sunset (asthamana). The Guruvayur temple administration had decided to discontinue the Ekadashi ritual due to concerns over crowd management and to provide more time to devotees for darshan.

The petition was filed by PC Harry and other members of families with priestly rights at the temple, arguing that Ekadashi was the most important festival and that udayasthamana pooja had been held on this day since at least 1972, although it was executed even earlier. .

The petitioners argued that the rituals had been rationalized by Adi Shankaracharya and any deviation could disrupt the manifestation of the divine force or ‘Chaitanya’.