BHOPAL: A grand temple dedicated to Bhakti Movement saint and Dalit icon Sant Ravidas will be built in Badtuma village of Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar district, the state’s CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced on Wednesday.
“We are deciding to build a Rs 100 crore grand temple here. The temple’s walls will be engraved with couplets and teachings of the great saint. The personality and spiritual work of the saint will also be displayed on the same temple’s premises. Further, it will house buildings for holding public events. Preparations for building the grand temple will start from now only,” Chouhan said while addressing Sant Ravidas Mahakumbh.
He also announced the Mukhya Mantri Teerth-Darshan, a free pilgrimage scheme for the elderly. The train under the scheme will go from Madhya Pradesh to Varanasi, Sant Ravidas’s birthplace. The announcement is being seen as a calculated move by the BJP and its longest-serving CM to woo the 16 per cent Scheduled Caste vote in the assembly poll year in the state, particularly when the saffron party is apprehensive about its loyal OBC vote, which may not side with it strongly this time.
The CM made a series of more SC-category-centric announcements, including raising the annual income limit of families from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 8 lakh under scholarship for SC students. Also, Chouhan announced that 20 per cent of land in industrial areas of the state will be reserved for youths from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) categories to establish their factories. In the MSME cluster policy, a cluster will be given to the SC industrialists.