JOIN USUttar Pradesh's Republic Day tableau depicts ghats, Kashi Vishwanath Dham
The religious centre of Varanasi, with the recently inaugurated Kashi Vishwanath Dham, was the centrepiece of Uttar Pradesh's tableau in the 73rd Republic Day Parade on Rajpath.
The first phase of the mega project — expected to boost tourism in the holy town — was dedicated to the people by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 13 last year. The Uttar Pradesh float, in its centre, depicts a model of the ancient Kashi Vishwanath temple, the structures of which are said to have been built by Holkar Queen Ahilyabai Holkar around 1780.
As the tableau rolled down Rajpath during the ceremonial parade, the accompanying song played with it also extolled the new corridor and how it had provided a direct link of the temple with the river Ganga for devotees. The temple premises have undergone a massive overhaul in the past two years as part of the mega Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project, whose foundation stone was laid by Modi on March 8, 2019.
It connects the main temple with Lalita Ghat via a corridor, and grand gateways and ornamental arches have been built in heritage architecture style in four directions, facing the ancient temple at its core. Three of the ornamental gateways have been depicted on the side of the tableau.
On one side, the famous ghats of Benares on Ganga, a key defining visual symbol of the city's spirituality, along with priests and other people offering prayers, form part of the display.
A total of 23 buildings were inaugurated mid-December in the first phase of the project. These will provide a variety of facilities to pilgrims, including 'yatri suvidha kendras', tourist facilitation centre, 'vedic kendra', 'mumukshu bhavan', 'bhogshala', city museum, viewing gallery and food court, among others.
The scale of the project was such it is now spread across five lakh square feet, whereas the earlier premises were limited to just around 3,000 square feet. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the work on the project was completed on schedule, the PMO had earlier said on the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project.
In the front of the tableau were the state's achievements through skill development and employment via 'One District One Product (ODOP)' initiative, which is based on the new micro, small and medium enterprise policy and industrial development policy of the state government.
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