Katra (Jammu and Kashmir), Aug 24 (Inditop.com) The pilgrim’s progress is all set to become easier. A proposal to construct a third cave at the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu and Kashmir has been mooted and it will be ready in four years. The move, pilgrims and authorities feel, will help ease the rush for ‘darshan’.
More than 7.5 million pilgrims visit the Vaishno Devi cave shrine every year and they get very little time for ‘darshan’ (glimpse of the deity) because of the rush.
The cave shrine of Vaishno Devi is located in the lower part of the Himalayas called Trikuta Hills. It is a rather small and narrow cave, at the end of which the sanctum sanctorum is located. The shrine contains images of three dieties Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati.
Pilgrims have to enter the shrine through the caves. To tackle the rush, the temple authorities constructed an artificial cave. Now, even this is proving insufficient.
The proposal for a third cave has been met with enthusiasm by the pilgrims.
“Well, if that happens, we will be very happy,” said Vinod Narang, 42, a pilgrim from Amritsar, who has brought his wife and three children with him.
“The rush is suffocating. It’s difficult to get in and also to get out. Everybody seems to be pushing one another,” he said.
“But the faith in the deity is so much that even a glimpse is a life-long blessing,” he added.
An official of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board told Inditop: “Now the rush has increased manifold and it has become imperative to construct a third cave to accommodate the increasing rush.”
“The whole plan is ready and will be executed soon,” he said.
“We hope that the cave would come up in the next four years. The work would take more than normal time because of the fragile ecology and also because we don’t want to interfere in the pilgrimage at any stage,” he said.
“The pilgrims would continue to have ‘darshan’ as they do on normal days, while the work on a third cave would go on simultaneously,” he said.
In the next four years, the shrine board hopes that the pilgrim arrival would touch 10 million.
Pilgrims, however, want the shrine board to look at the track too. The 13-km track, they say, is now getting too crowded.
“At times, one has to wait for several minutes to allow fellow pilgrims to move upwards or downwards. This should not happen and the pony track should be altogether separate from the track used by those trekking on foot,” said Gian Chand, a resident of Jammu, who is a regular pilgrim to the shrine for the past five years.
The Vaishno Devi shrine is one of the richest shrines in India, with the offerings more than Rs.200 million (Rs.20 crore) annually.
The shrine is located 13 km uphill from Katra, the base camp 45 km north of Jammu.
