All that glitters is not gold in Kedarnath shrine: Congress' Karan Mahra

At 3,584 metres, the Kedarnath temple stands in the Garhwal Himalayas.
 
Ever since Uttarakhand became a state in the year 2000, Kedarnath has weathered many storms, including the deluge in 2013.
 
The temple too has seen many controversies in the past 23 years. The latest, over a Rs 125 crore gold “scam”, has rocked the hill state.
 
Since Kedarnath is one of the holiest Hindu shrines in India, Opposition parties can turn the emotive issue to their advantage, especially as Assembly elections in the Hindi belt — Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan — draw close.
 
Last year, Badrinath Kedarnath Temple Committee President Ajendra Ajay announced that 550 layers of gold were transported to Kedarnath on 18 horse mules to be applied as layers on the inner walls of the shrine. Nineteen artisans had done the work under the supervision of two officers of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It took nearly a week. After the work was completed, a six-member team from IIT Roorkee, the Central Building Research Institute (of Roorkee), and the ASI visited the Kedarnath Dham and inspected the sanctum sanctorum.
 
On June 16, Santosh Trivedi, a priest of the temple, dropped the bombshell.
 
He released a video, claiming a scam involving 207 kg of gold, costing (about) Rs 125 crore at the current value of the yellow metal’s market price of Rs 60,000 per 10 gm. In the video he says: “... [the sanctum sanctorum] was studded with gold months back, but when I entered [the temple] today, gold had been replaced with brass (an alloy of copper and zinc)! ... gold worth Rs 125 crore is gone! This is fraud!”
 
He said a devotee from Maharashtra, whose name has not been disclosed, had donated 230 kg of gold, of which only 23 kg was used in the job.
 
Ajendra Ajay in a statement said only 23 kg was donated and slammed the Opposition for tarnishing the image of the hill state.
 
Buckling under pressure, Tourism and Religious Affairs Minister Satpal Maharaj has decided to set up an inquiry committee headed by the Garhwal commissioner to get to the bottom of the matter. The minister has instructed including technical experts and goldsmiths in the panel.
 
However, it is not clear when the report will be submitted to the government. “This matter will be decided shortly,” said a top government official.
 
Unsurprisingly, politics has taken over. “Jo kedarnath mein chamak raha hai woh darsal sona hai nahin (All that glitters in Kedarnath shrine is not gold),” said state Congress President Karan Mahra. 
 
From former chief minister Harish Rawat to Mahra, a host of Congress leaders have demanded a high-level inquiry into the scam, pertaining to the gold-plating of the sanctum sanctorum of the ancient Lord Shiva shrine, set up by Adi Shankaracharya.
 
This is not the first time that the BJP government in Uttarakhand has been caught on the wrong foot on sensitive issues pertaining to the Kedarnath shrine. A few years ago, then chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had set up a chardham shrine board, a move that had angered the priests. Immediately after he was removed in 2021, a year before the Assembly elections, the Garhwal region, and especially priests, celebrated his ouster.
 
But the agitation did not end until the new chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, announced scrapping the board. Thus, the BJP again formed the government with a thumping majority of 47 seats in the 70-member House.
 
As the issue lingered, the Congress mounted attacks on the BJP. “The BJP plays with the religious sentiments of the Hindus by carrying out such heinous crimes of looting gold from the holy shrine of Kedarnath,” said Suryakant Dhasmana, vice-president of the state Congress.
 
The Kedarnath shrine was at the centre of another controversy in 2006, when the then Dwarika Shankaracharya, the late Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati, decided to install a shivling close to the temple. The move was strongly opposed by rival Shankaracharyas as well as state BJP leaders, who did not want to give “an inch” to Swaroopanand, who was considered a Congress supporter. Swaroopanand wanted to install the shivling, weighing three quintals (one quintal = 100 kg), at the samadhi of Adi Shankaracharya, close to the temple. But later, the move was shelved.
 
Kedarnath is the seat of Lord Shiva and one of the 12 jyotirlingas established by Adi Shankaracharya more than 1,000 years ago. The temple remains open for pilgrims during the summer.