Ahmedabad, June 19: As Gujarat limps back to normalcy, it’s going to be treated to three yatras later this month, one religious and two political. And at least one of the yatras—the annual Jagannath rath yatra on July 12—has already set off the alarm bells in the Ahmedabad police department as intelligence reports warn of trouble.

The BJP’s Gaurav Yatra, trumpeting the party’s successes in the state, will be led from the front by Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, on its part, is planning parallel counter-rallies.

But it’s the Jagannath yatra that has the police worried. They are pleading with the government not to allow the rath yatra even as they try to coax organisers to call it off.

Both Ahmedabad Police Commissioner K R Kaushik and Director General of Police K Chakravarthi have written to the government. ‘‘Holding the rath yatra in the prevailing conditions is fraught with dangers,’’ says Chakravarthi. ‘‘The police are already burdened and we do not have enough manpower to make tight security arrangements in the sensitive walled city. It will be in everyone’s interest if the rath yatra is called off this year.’’

Modi said earlier this week that the government had not taken any decision on this. ‘‘I have not received any letter from any department regarding the rath yatra,’’ he said when asked about Kaushik’s request.

The police feel the rehabilitation process of the riot victims will suffer a serious setback if violence recurs. ‘‘We have gained their confidence and persuaded them to return home. All our efforts will go waste if violence recurs,’’ an officer said.

The police are now working on the head priest of Jagannath Temple, Mahant Rameshwar Das, asking him to convince the akharas and devotees to call off the yatra. Mahendra Jha of the Jagannath Temple Trust says, ‘‘I don’t think it is possible to call off the yatra entirely. We may decide on a different route.”

Police sources said the akharas and the VHP are asking the temple trust not to give in. Though VHP state general secretary, Dr Jaideep Patel, said they had left the matter to the temple and government, the VHP released a statement today declaring its ‘‘unanimous support’’ to the rathyatra. General Secretary of VHP-Gujarat Dilipbhai Trivedi was quoted as saying: ‘‘The Jagannath Temple Trust members have also been assured of our support ... The VHP firmly believes that the rathyatra should be taken out in its full tradition and grandeur and on its original route only.’’

As the police walk on eggs, Modi will be occupied otherwise: he will be steering a ‘Gaurav Yatra’ across the state’s 18,000 villages from June 23—a trumpeting of all the good work the government has done in the past four years. State BJP General secretary Nalin Bhatt said the yatra will coincide with the Rashtriya Janchetna programme to expose Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the country, starting on June 23, the day Shyamaprasad Mukherjee ‘‘laid his life in 1953 on the Kashmir issue’’.