For one, the main proponents of the proposal to amend the Shri Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine Act (the original Act was proposed by Jagmohan when he was the Governor in 1986), is BJP MLA from Udhampur Shiv Charan Gupta. For another, the BJP government at the Centre is propped up with the support of two National Conference MPs.

VHP leader Ashok Singhal has held several meetings on the subject with various BJP leaders including Home Minister L K Advani but the man who has been at the forefront of the Ram Mandir agitation had little to say to Singhal, apart from assuring him that they would discuss the matter.

The controversy began with the National Conference government in Kashmir passing a Cabinetresolution on August 20 to constitute a Cabinet sub-committee comprising six ministers to examine amendments to the Vaishnodevi Act. The proposed Act, according to the Cabinet note on the matter, is to be retrospective in nature, from August 1986, the date when Jagmohan had originally passed an ordinance to take over the shrine's management, and give this to a board comprising 10 members.

Under Jagmohan's scheme, the Baridars who traditionally ran the temple would no longer have any rights on the affairs of the temple and all collections were to be given to the Board which would then use it to run the temple and also to develop infrastructure for it. Prior to this, the daily collections from devotees was kept by the Baridars who did not plough it back into the temple. Last year, collections amounted to Rs 42 crore, and a total of around 50 lakh pilgrims visited the shrine. The board spends Rs 15 crore annually to upgrade the complex and to develop infrastructure, such as rest houses for pilgrims.

UnderJagmohan's amendment, which was passed by the J&K Assembly in 1988 and converted into an Act, the Baridars who wished to stay on to conduct poojas could do so but only as employees of the Trust at a monthly salary.

The Baridars contested this in the High Court, and later the Supreme Court, where it was finally decided that they would be paid some compensation in lieu of their ancestral rights to the shrine. This worked out to be Rs 4.5 crore of principal amount and Rs 8 crore of interest, to be paid to roughly 1,400 claimants - the descendants of the original Pandit Sridhar who discovered the shrine several hundred years ago.

This compensation was announced by the Governor in 1995 through an order (SRO 165) but the proposed amendment seeks to nullify this. So, while the trust has already paid a sum of Rs 2.5 crore to 400 of these claimants who have filed affidavits before the district magistrate stating that this is the full and final settlement, this will no longer be valid. The money that is now to bepaid to the Baridars under the new scheme will be adjusted against what has already been paid to them.

According to Singhal who addressed a press conference on the matter, the Vaishnodevi trust currently holds a corpus of Rs 100 crore, and this is what the Farooq government is eyeing. According to their plan, the Baridars are to get a third of all collections and roughly Rs 80 crore of the current corpus will have to be given to them.

VHP sources also said that while the NC is currently trying to make an amendment and bring the Baridars back into the picture, they may later try and move further amendments to supersede the board completely. The government, according to sources, has plans to send Vaishnodevi trust CEO, IAS officer Anil Goswami, for a year to the UK. Once Goswami goes, VHP officials contend, the NC will be free to tamper with the trust further.

Scuttling of the Vaishnodevi Shrine Act