Over 14 crore devotees have visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi since the inauguration of the temple corridor by Prime Minister Narendra Modi 26 months ago. News18 got exclusive access inside the temple complex on Saturday.
The CEO of Kashi Vishwanath Temple, Vishwa Bhushan, told News18 in an interview that the number of pilgrims had increased almost five times since the corridor started. “Earlier, only about 20,000 to 25,000 pilgrims visited the temple daily. But since the corridor started, we have nearly 1.5 lakh pilgrims daily, and much more during the Saavan days. It is an almost five times increase,” Bhushan said.
Inside the temple on Saturday, News18 saw a huge rush of pilgrims who pay obeisance at the temple and make it a point also to visit the Nandi idol near the garbgriha. Next to that is the Gyanvapi Mosque, which has been in the news since the court prayers were allowed for the Hindu community in the Vyas Tahkhana of the mosque. The puja here was stopped in the 1990s by the then CM Mulayam Singh Yadav on oral orders.
“There should be a court decision on this soon…have you ever seen a Nandi face a mosque? Priests here say the Nandi faces the so-called Wazukhana in the mosque premises as there is the original Shivling there. It is about the sentiments of crores of Hindus in the wake of overwhelming evidence that a Hindu temple existed at the Gyanvapi site,” a group of devotees from Madhya Pradesh told News18.
Paramilitary forces guard the mosque complex, which is covered from all sides by high iron bars. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recently said in the state assembly that Nandi Baba opened the barricades to the Vyas Tehkhana after seeing the grand pran pratishtha ceremony of Lord Ram in Ayodhya. “We want only these three places — Mathura, Kashi and Ayodhya — as these are religious places were our Gods took incarnations,” the CM said. Many devotees who come to Kashi are now citing this statement of the CM to press for a quick resolution of the Gyanvapi issue.
Figures shared by Bhushan with News18 meanwhile show that the highest number of pilgrims in a month at the temple was about 95 lakh devotees last August.
The corridor from the Lalita Ghat to the temple was inaugurated in December 2021 by the Prime Minister. “Since then till February 23, 14.12 crore pilgrims have visited the temple,” Bhushan told News18. Nearly 50 lakh pilgrims were here last December and 46.5 lakh this January.
Nearly Rs 900 crore was spent on the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor. A new addition to the corridor is the light-and-sound show in the evening on Lalita Ghat near the Ganges from where the corridor begins. In the temple, many devotees speak about the desire for the Gyanvapi dispute to be resolved after the ASI survey pointed to the remnants of an ancient Hindu temple at the site.
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