Frontline ·
Sacrificed to the shrine
The expansion of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board’s institutional empire has come at the expense of numerous displaced families now locked in legal battles over compensation, raising difficult questions about what “public purpose” means.
Kashmir Chand’s two-room tin-roofed house stands on an 18-marla (1 marla=272.25 square feet) plot in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district, about 35 kilometres from the renowned Vaishno Devi shrine, in a settlement described in official records as a “colony”. There is a small kitchen, a courtyard, and a dilapidated bathroom near the entrance. That is all that remains of the economic security of a family that once owned and cultivated 12 kanals of land about 25 years ago (1 kanal=0.125 acre).
“When we had land, we used to store enough food rations for 7-8 months at home,” said Chand (70). “Now, if we do not work for a day, we do not know about tomorrow.”
When the land was forcibly acquired in 2000, villagers like him who resisted the displacement faced police action, and first information reports were lodged against several protesters. The consequences of the dispossession and displacement have unfolded now. “Once we had adequate land, livestock, fruit trees, and a big house. Now, we have just two rooms,” said Chand, whose son works as a contractual/casual employee at the Jal Shakti Public Health Engineering Department, earning about Rs.9,000 a month.
Nearly a kilometre away from this colony stand the symbols of the modern expansion of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, including a university, a super-speciality hospital, a medical college (whose recognition was revoked in January 2026), residential infrastructure, and other institutions. The infrastructure has been built on vast swathes of land that once sustained over 250 farming families from Kakryal village and the adjoining Sirah Kotla village, situated over 35 km from the cave shrine.
In the first half of 2026 alone, the cave shrine in the Trikuta Hills attracted over 50 lakh devotees. While donations to the shrine climbed from Rs.63.85 crore in 2020-21 to Rs.231.50 crore in 2023-24, according to reports, pilgrim offerings of gold and silver have also risen sharply.
Since taking over the management of the shrine from the local Baridar community in 1986, the Shrine Board has transformed the pilgrimage into one of India’s best-managed religious journeys. It has developed extensive infrastructure for the convenience of pilgrims, including upgraded tracks, accommodation, a community kitchen, proper sanitation, medical facilities, and other amenities along the route, while expanding its footprint beyond the shrine. It even runs a helicopter service, offering an eight-minute flight from Katra to Sanjichhat that spares the pilgrims a gruelling 14-km trek to the mountain shrine.
The success of this pilgrimage model has resulted in an unprecedented boom in Katra town’s economy and the overall tourism industry of Jammu and Kashmir.
However, for the families of these two villages, located about 10 km from Katra town, the spectacular success of the pilgrimage model is a painful paradox. Everyone in this colony narrates the same stories of having lost agricultural self-sufficiency, regular income, food security, economic independence, a secure home and property rights, an asset that could be passed to the next generation, and most importantly, social status.