Record crowd at Varanasi’s Kashi Vishwanath Dham on New Year’s Eve

The local administration in Varanasi had not expected such an unprecedented number of devotees. Best of all, they weren’t expecting more than a million visitors for the day.

In Kashi Vishwanath, the number of devotees never exceeded 2.5 lakhs even on the peak time Mahashivratri.

Such a large number of visits to the temple on non-festival days reflects the immense enthusiasm across the country to visit Kashi Vishwanath Dham, when it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The local administration has also requested the devotees, especially VIPs, to stop their visit to Kashi Vishwanath Dham to ensure proper crowd management.

Earlier on December 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated Phase 1 of the newly constructed Kashi Vishwanath Dham at a cost of approx. 339 crores.

The foundation stone of the project was laid by the Prime Minister on March 8, 2019. To facilitate the pilgrims and devotees of Baba Vishwanath, who had to face the congested roads and surroundings, it was the vision of the Prime Minister for a long time. Poor maintenance, when they practiced the age-old practice of taking a dip in the holy river, collecting Ganges water and offering it at the temple.

To realize this vision, Shri Kashi Vishwanath Dham was conceptualized as a project to create an easily accessible route connecting Shri Kashi Vishwanath Temple to the banks of river Ganga.

A total of 23 buildings were inaugurated in the first phase of the project. They are providing various facilities to the pilgrims visiting Shri Kashi Vishwanath Temple which include Yatri Facilitation Centre, Tourist Facilitation Centre, Vedic Centre, Mumukshu Bhawan, Bhogshala, City Museum, Viewing Gallery, Food Court etc.

The scale of the project was such that the project is now spread over a vast area of ​​about 5 lakh square feet, whereas earlier the campus was limited to around 3000 square feet. Despite the COVID pandemic, the work on the project was completed as per schedule.