It seems Narendra Modi will begin the 2019 parliamentary poll campaign after taking blessings from Lord Shiva at Uttarakhand's Kedarnath temple as the state's BJP government has been given an October 2018 deadline to reconstruct the shrine, which the Prime Minister would inaugurate.

"Party chief Amit Shah recently called a meeting of stakeholders, including chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, to convey the cut-off date for rebuilding of the complex ravaged by floods in 2013, and also that the project would be unveiled by the PM on completion," a highly placed source told Mail Today.

Modi also visited Kedarnath in May at the reopening of the temple after the winters and was briefed about the work going on there by the chief minister and his team of officials there.

In the meeting with the BJP chief at his official residence, Rawat along with all the stakeholders including Colonel Ajay Kothiyal - head of the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), which is leading the reconstruction effort - and the state chief secretary were present.

Sources said that Shah instructed the officials and the state government to adhere to the specific timelines and complete the project in time for which several private individuals have also pitched in with funds and resources.

The PM is known to be a devotee of Lord Shiva and visited Somnath temple in Gujarat this year for blessings after ending his campaign on the last day of voting in the Uttar Pradesh polls which were later swept by his party with a thumping majority.

BACKGROUND

Modi, as Gujarat CM, had also been involved in the post-tragedy relief operations following the deadly 2013 Uttarakhand deluge and had offered full support to the then Congress-led government in the northern state.

Sources say a team of industrialist Sajjan Jindal is also assisting reconstruction work and would invest money for reviving the structures destroyed by the flash floods in the temple town and making arrangements for pilgrims who mostly come after a trek of 20 km to the shrine for darshan.

The six-month-long yatra season is the backbone of the state's economy and also provides financial sustenance to locals. After thousands of pilgrims and locals were killed in the devastation, the responsibility for reconstruction was undertaken by NIM as other agencies expressed inability to work at an altitude of 11,000 feet and lack of workers who can operate in snow. In July 2013, Kothiyal launched Operation Kedar with his team of 750 specialised workers. Officials from the institute had started work in the area, entrusted with the task of reopening the trekking route for the temple complex as the old route had been completed washed away in the disaster.

The NIM team had also created the required infrastructure within a year to help the state government resume pilgrimage. As part of beautification of the complex, all avatars of Lord Shiva would be sculpted on the safety wall along with the construction of ghats on both rivers Mandakini and Saraswati.

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