ONE OF the two visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Jammu ahead of the elections was to the Katra town in the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Assembly seat of Reasi district. On September 19, the PM held a rally and road show in Katra, which is the base camp for pilgrims visiting the Vaishno Devi shrine. “A government is required here (in J&K), which respects our faith and promotes our culture,’’ Modi said. The Vaishno Devi shrine has always been significant for the Modi-led BJP, with the then PM nominee of the party praying at the temple before kickstaring his 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. This time, the significance is doubled as, after the 2022 delimitation, there is now a Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Assembly seat, carved out of the Reasi and Udhampur Assembly constituencies. It voted in the second phase of the Assembly polls on Wednesday. After the defeat in Uttar Pradesh's Faizabad seat — where the Ayodhya Ram Temple falls — in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the party “left nothing to chance in Shri Mata Vaishno Devi seat”, party leaders admitted. However, the BJP’s chances look tough as its candidate Baldev Raj Sharma, who represented the Reasi Assembly segment earlier, faced a multi-cornered contest. The biggest problem could prove to be the baridars, the erstwhile custodians of the Vaishno Devi shrine. The community, which earlier backed the BJP fielded their own candidate, Sham Singh, this time. If he gets the 14,000 votes of the community, Sham Singh could emerge as the giant killer. Baridars, who for generations have performed aarti at the Vaishno Devi shrine, have been demanding the restoration of their rights to conduct full prayers at the shrine and the reservation of jobs for members of their families in the Shrine Board. Members of the community speak of being “betrayed” on a promise the PM made in 2014 to find a “permanent solution” to the community’s problems. However, the BJP claims this was not a major hurdle in the polls. “Baridars, who had certain genuine issues after the enactment of the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act in 1986 . were never given a fair hearing. It was only after Sh @NarendraModi took over as Prime Minister in 2014 that the holy town of Katra & the Holy Shrine started getting the deserved attention. Baridars’ issue included in BJP Election Sankalp Patra 2024,” Union Minister of State and Udhampur MP Jitendra Singh said in a recent post on X. The BJP's Sharma had another strong contender in the Congress’s Bhopinder Singh, who was the president of the association of the ponywalas and pithus who operate on the track between Katra and the Vaishno Devi shrine. Sharma is banking on the support of the nearly 9,000 Muslim voters in the seat. Former minister Jugal Kishore, who had left the Congress and joined the Democratic Progressive Azad Party led by Ghulam Nabi Azad, was also in the race, as an Independent. He too has considerable support in the constituency.
