Restoration of Graveyard Near Shankaracharya Temple in Jammu and Kashmir Sparks Controversy

The issue of restoration of a graveyard on the way to Shankaracharya Temple in Jammu and Kashmir has snowballed into a major controversy. The Jammu and Kashmir government has awarded the contract for the work of this centuries-old graveyard through a tender process for the'improvement of the mazar (dargah) of Syed Usman Sahib located on Shankaracharya Road '. The Bharatiya Janata Party has entered the fray. Kashmiri Pandit groups were the first to question this construction work. They claim that this mazar has been built recently and there was no such place earlier. Ravinder Raina, the head of the'Save Sharda Committee ', said in a post on'X ', "I know that the entire land on the left and right side belongs to the Social Forestry Department. I have never heard in my lifetime that there is any such mazar (graveyard) on the way to the Shankaracharya Temple in Srinagar. Has it suddenly come up here, or was it already there?" He further wrote, "My senior colleagues who go to the temple have often been asked by me to tweet on behalf of the community."