For a week before Yatra, 600 NRIs attended Morari Bapu session

While 200 NRIs stayed near the cave, others flew in daily by choppers; experts say pilgrims’ rush is responsible for melting

Even as the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board claims ignorance about the fact that thousands of pilgrims were allowed to visit the shrine before the official start of the Yatra on June 30, it had itself permitted nearly 600 NRIs to have darshan of the ice lingam from June 23 to July 1.

Well-known religious preacher Morari Bapu held a week-long Ram Katha discourse near the shrine during this period.

While nearly 200 NRIs who attended the discourse stayed near the cave in tents arranged by the Board, most flew in daily on helicopters from Baltal and Srinagar in Kashmir.

The Board admits that it gave permission for the Ram Katha, with the sessions lasting two to five hours daily in sub-zero temperatures.

This is likely to further fuel the debate over the number of pilgrims being allowed to visit the cave shrine, whose claim to fame is an ice Shiva lingam that forms naturally.

However, that hasn’t been happening for the last two years, with the lingam melting completely this time even before the official start of the Yatra.

While the Shrine Board has been quick to blame global warming, experts say that more than that, the large number of people visiting the shrine and the helicopter sorties to it could be behind the melting.

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Admitting that Morari Bapu held a week-long Ram Katha before the official start of the Yatra, the Shrine Board’s Chief Executive Officer, Arun Kumar, says: “There had been a proposal from them in this regard for the last three years, but it could not materialise earlier for one reason or the other.”

Kumar insists the Ram Katha session couldn’t be blamed for the premature melting of the lingam, “as earlier also, we have been permitting pilgrims and helicopter sorties to the Amarnath cave a week or so before the start of the Yatra”.

This year by the time Governor Lt Gen (retd) S K Sinha performed the Pratham Pooja — the official opening of the Yatra — between 30,000 and 50,000 pilgrims already had darshan of the lingam.

The Shrine Board claims it had no knowledge of this, and that it was up to the security forces, deployed in large numbers, to stop people. “We have been asking the security forces not to allow anybody to proceed to the cave before June 30,” said Shrine Board spokesman Madan Mantoo.

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Incidentally, as per reports, on May 25, the ice Shiva lingam stood at 12.5 ft in height and 8 ft in circumference.

Even on June 9, when Sinha dropped in for a review of the Yatra arrangements along with senior officials, the lingam was fully formed. Twenty-two days later, it had melted away completely.