As many as five lakh devotees came to the Ram Temple on Day one after the new temple was opened for devotees, perhaps a record for the number of pilgrims coming to any religious place in India in a single day.
This was well past the expectations of the government of about one lakh devotees daily at Ram Temple. The rush may finally settle at about 1-3 lakh devotees daily, with higher figure on the weekends, post the initial euphoria. This may translate to over five crore devotees in Ayodhya every year, and surpass the number of devotees who come to Mecca or the Vatican, as well as other top religious sites in India like Tirupati Balaji in Andhra Pradesh.
The new religious triangle of Ayodhya, Varanasi and Prayagraj is set to be the epicentre of a pilgrimage boom in Uttar Pradesh and its economy. The Ram Temple will be fully ready by the end of this year and work on the entire complex is expected to be expedited after the Prime Minister’s latest directions and completed by mid-2025.
The Prayagraj Mahakumbh will be held in January-March 2025. The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor on the Ganga bank is already getting a high number of pilgrims in Varanasi.
With excellent connectivity by roads and expressways, air and rail like Vande Bharat, the three religious centres could see tourists plan package trips to UP — a visit to Ayodhya’s Ram Temple, a dip in Prayagraj’s Sangam, and a dip in the Ganga at Varanasi and visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
This could become the major driving force behind UP’s aim to become a $1-trillion economy in the coming years. A paper by SBI Research says UP may have a tax collection of Rs 25,000 crore in 2024-25 with Ayodhya being a major factor as devotees are coming not just from across India but from different parts of the world. Tourism alone could make UP richer by about Rs 4 lakh crore this year.
Ayodhya could surpass Vatican City and Mecca in terms of the number of visiting devotees, as per current estimates, if infrastructure and stay facilities at Ayodhya are upped on the same trajectory over the coming months with the Yogi Adityanath government going in a mission mode on it.
Tirupati Balaji in Andhra Pradesh attracts 2.5 crore devotees yearly, Mecca in Saudi Arabia attracts a similar number, and the Vatican gets about 90 lakh visitors annually.
Among other highly visited sites is Vaishno Devi in J&K which sees 80 lakh people yearly while the Taj Mahal attracts 70 lakh people.
News18 spent almost 10 days in Ayodhya and saw several new hotels have sprung up to accommodate the rush of pilgrims. The town has a limited number of existing ashrams, dharamshalas and homestays, but much more would be needed given the number of devotees reaching here. The road infrastructure inside the town has been spruced up, but the strain showed on Tuesday after five lakh devotees thronged the Ram Path trying to get access to the temple. People had to walk several kilometres as electric buses and battery carts could not accommodate the flood of people in Ayodhya.
The UP government needs to gear up for this challenge so that the opportunities are converted into successes and the potential is realised. Ayodhya is a small town with limitless possibilities now as the grand Ram Mandir becomes a magnet for devotees.
Comments
0 comment