Bharatiya Janata Party national vice-president and Ganga Samagra campaign leader Uma Bharti along with thousands of devotees offered prayers at the famous Dhari Devi temple on the bank of Alaknanda river here on Wednesday.
She said that they had prayed for the safety of the people of Uttarakhand and the pilgrims who undertake the Char Dham Yatra. However, Bharti and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ expressed annoyance on the occasion because rituals could not be conducted at the temple purportedly due to mismanagement and heavy rush of the public.
On being questioned by the media Bharti said that she would not hesitate to contest the lok Sabha election from Haridwar Parliamentary constituency but had left the decision to the party national president Rajnath Singh. She further stressed that her stand on the Dhari Devi temple remains the same. She wants that the famous Dhari Devi temple to be protected and its purity to be maintained. The company responsible for implementing the Srinagar hydro power project should have worked on the security of the famous temple and constructed boundary walls around it.
Former CM Pokhriyal said that there should be two connecting roads to Dhari Devi temple- one for entry and one for exit to facilitate crowd management. The GVK company should construct these roads to avoid any mishappening in the future, he added.
After offering prayers at the Dhari Devi shrine, Pokhriyal left the temple while Bharti attended the devotional programme on the BRO ground at Kalyasaur with about 4,000 people, mostly women. This programme which consisted of bhajans being sung, was earlier slated to be held near the temple but could not be held there due to mismanagement and lack of crowd management.
locals, devotees, office bearers of the BJP and Ganga Samagra campaign were among those present on the occasion. It is pertinent to mention here that there are some who believe the the disaster which struck Uttarakhand in June last year was divine retribution for the shifting of the Dhari Devi idol and temple from its original place on the banks of the Alaknanda. The idol and temple were shifted to prevent their submersion in the rising waters of the Srinagar project reservoir last year.