Trivendra Singh Rawat, Yogi Adityanath Offer Prayers At Badrinath Temple

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath visited the Badrinath temple on Tuesday.

The two chief ministers were supposed to visit the temple on Monday after attending the portal closing ceremony at the Kedarnath shrine. However, the visit had to be put off due to heavy snowfall at Kedarnath.

Mr Rawat and Mr Adityanath spent the night at Gauchar and reached Badrinath in a helicopter around 9.30 am, Dharmadhikari of Badrinath temple Bhuvan Chandra Uniyal said.

Traditional musical instruments of Uttarakhand were played to welcome Mr Adityanath, he said.

Accompanied by Mr Rawat all along, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister spent around 15 minutes at the Himalayan shrine and prayed for everyone's happiness by chanting the Vedic hymn "Sarve bhavantu sukhinah".

After offering prayers, the two chief ministers left for the foundation stone laying ceremony of a guest house being built by the Uttar Pradesh government in Badrinath.

The guest house will be built at an estimated cost of Rs 11 crore in traditional Garhwali style using eco-friendly technology. It will have 40 rooms.

Later, Mr Rawat and Mr Adityanath visited the last Indian village on the India-China border and spoke to Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel deployed there.

Both Mr Rawat and Mr Adityanath have their ancestral villages in Pauri district of Uttarakhand.