A day after 12 people died in a stampede at Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir's Katra on Saturday, pilgrims thronged the temple for darshan following 'stricter' guidelines of the authorities.
The annual festival, which used to attract millions of devotees from and outside the country to the hill shrine, begins on November 17 and concludes on January 15, 2023.
Ahead of a crucial meeting on Jammu and Kashmir, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and is believed to have discussed the security situation in the Union territory which has witnessed a spate of targeted killings since May 12.
A high-powered probe committee set up by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha visited the site and appealed to the general public to share videos, statements or any other evidence about the incident.
In his monthly Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast, Modi said Amrit Kalash Yatra will be organised under the campaign and 7,500 pots carrying soil from different corners of the country will be brought to the national capital along with saplings.
The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in Madhya Pradesh will be taking some senior citizens in the state on free pilgrimages by air under its existing scheme and the exercise will start from May 21, months before the assembly polls in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state.
The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, however, denied the charge, saying all necessary arrangements were made in view of the expected rush, while Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh blamed a minor altercation for the 'unfortunate' incident.
19 per cent of all travel in India (by bus, train or air) was pilgrimage or religious travel (possibly the single largest after business and family-related travel), discovers Ambi Parameswaran.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said efforts are on to rescue the 300 stranded people, and they could be airlifted as the weather clears. Power and water supply has been snapped in several areas.
The West Bengal government objected to the inclusion of the Leader of the Opposition in the committee.
Citing the examples of Kashi Vishwanath temple, Ujjain and Ayodhya, where major reconstruction works have been carried out in recent years, Modi attributed the "years of neglect" to a "slave mentality".
The main architectural lesson demonstrated by this project is how sacred spaces that have immense spiritual and heritage value, located in dense urban settings, can be transformed in a respectful and sensitive manner.
The NCM had said earlier that it had received various representations from the Jain community regarding the conversion of Jain pilgrimage site Shri Sammed Shikharji Hill into an eco-tourism hub by the Jharkhand government and the central dispensation.
The rain ebbed in some places in north India and pelted down in others on Tuesday, with at least seven more people dead and hundreds stranded as raging waters gushed through villages, towns and fields -- from the desert state of Rajasthan to the hills of Himachal Pradesh.
It is on the exact spot where the Guru is said to have created 108 waterfalls, that the Yangtse clash took place between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA on the night of December 9, 2022. As it had done in Ladakh in May 2020, the PLA tried to change the unmarked LAC in the Yangtse sector in Arunachal Pradesh. It was the most serious border incident since the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, notes Claude Arpi.
The Travancore Devaswom Board, the apex temple body which manages the shrine, on Tuesday said a portion of the gold-plated roof would be opened on August 3 to take stock of the leak.
'Definitely, crowd management will be a challenge, but we will ensure we have enough forces at hand to take care of any situation.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the first phase of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham in Varanasi, a project which is spread over five lakh square feet and connects the temple premises to the River Ganga besides providing several facilities to devotees.
Ending the line at Pipalkoti will mean the army will have to cover a longer distance to the China border by road than it would have needed to had the rail link gone up to Joshimath.
Six pilgrims and a woman pilot were killed when a chopper crashed in Katra, the base camp of the Vaishnodevi shrine in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district.
Concerned over the development, the security agencies reworked their strategy, especially keeping in mind the Amarnath Yatra beginning June 30.
As the train which started from Howrah slowed down as a mark of caution running across freshly repaired tracks, a few muttered 'Jagannath, Jagannath', the name of the presiding deity of Puri, the destination of the train, but most were too stunned to speak.
The helicopter came to pieces as it crashed and went up in flames.
Modi said India's next general elections will be held in 2024 and he invited G20 delegates to visit the country to witness the "festival of democracy" in the "mother of democracy".
The full-court press on India over Ukraine, the BBC 'documentary', the Oxfam report, the Hindenburg attack on Adani and obliquely on the Indian economy, and any number of other acts are signs that India is a target, warns Rajeev Srinivasan.
A blog linked to TRF, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, published the list of 56 Kashmiri Pandit employees who were recruited under the Prime Minister's Rehabilitation Package, and warned of mounting attacks on them.
The Northern Railways said it has cancelled around 17 trains and diverted around 12 others, while traffic has been suspended at four locations due to waterlogging.
The Delhi government has included Vailankanni Church in Tamil Nadu to the list of pilgrimage sites under its free pilgrimage scheme for senior citizens, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Wednesday.
In the first week, there shall be a cap of 2,000 pilgrims each day, of which 1,900 would be from Jammu and Kashmir and the remaining 100 from outside.
Formula 1's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix race faced a temporary setback after Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked an oil depot Friday
'The problem is that all this reconstruction work is being monitored by the prime minister himself with inputs being provided directly by the PMO so nobody in the state government dare contradict them even if their suggestions are totally contrary to what the ecology of this region requires.'
Announcing this in Dehradun on Thursday, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said conducting the yatra amid the raging pandemic is not possible.
Seven pilgrims from Uttar Pradesh and three from Delhi were among the 12 people who died in a stampede at Vaishno Devi shrine atop Trikuta hills in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir in the early hours of Saturday, officials said.
Calcutta High Court ordered setting up of a committee which may recommend to the state a ban on entry to Sagar Island if there is any violation of health safety norms.
Microsoft's Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella, in communication with employees, said the company will align its cost structure with revenue and customer demand.
The annual Amarnath yatra to the 3,880-metre high cave shrine in the south Kashmir Himalayas will commence on June 28 and culminate, as per the tradition, on the day of Raskha Bandhan festival on August 22, officials said.
Locals hold gradual land subsidence responsible for the fissures and attribute it to the widening of the national highway, violation of norms in construction works related to mandi parishad, erosion caused by the Pindar river and unsystematic flushing out of rainwater.
In the pre-scheduled meeting, the home minister reviewed the prevailing security situation in the Union Territory and steps taken to deal with the Pakistan-backed terrorists and maintain peace.
At least eight persons were killed in a cloudburst near the holy cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir Himalayas on Friday evening, damaging 25 tents and three community kitchens, officials said.
This past week, His Holiness has been in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, the Union Territory where Indian and Chinese soldiers have been in a standoff for two years, since April 2020.
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