Lord Jagannath's chariot to roll on Sukhoi jet tires on Kolkata streets: Report
The Rath Yatra, to be held on June 27, will be organised by ISCKON Kolkata.
The organizer arrived at a decision to run the massive chariot on Sukhoi tires after a search for around 20 years.
'The old tires, sourced from a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, have been replaced by tires used on Sukhoi fighter planes and manufactured by MRF,' said the NDTV report.
But it was a challenge for the organizer to arrange the tires as they had to assess the charriot's weight they could bear.
"Finding a weighing scale for a massive chariot was a huge task. We eventually managed to weigh it and it came to about nine tonnes. Factoring in the weight of devotees on the chariot during the Yatra, we realised that the tires would need to support a weight of about 16 tonnes," Radharamn Das, vice president and spokesperson for ISCKON Kolkata, told NDTV.
"We first spoke to Dunlop, but they had stopped manufacturing these tires. After extensive research, we found Sukhoi tires to be the best match. We first tried to contact MRF in 2018, but could not get through. Eventually, they got back six years later. In December 2024, they sent a team, we worked out a price and they delivered the tires a month back," Das added.
He further said that MRF officials were surprised when ISKCON told them about the requirement. "We were told that the only other client for these tires is the Indian Air Force."
The four tires supplied by MRF came at a cost of ₹ 1.80 lakh.
After the tires were fitted to the chariot, a 24-km long dry run was performed for a trial.
The Rath Yatra in Kolkata was started in 1972 with a small chariot.
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