Shrine board recast with six members

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a prominent spiritual guru, was today appointed as a member of the SASB, a temple trust which was at the centre of communal tension in J&K last year.

Five months after Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) members resigned at the peak of the land row agitation in Jammu, Governor NN Vohra on Wednesday reconstituted the board, and among others, appointed Sri Sri Ravishanker, the world-renowned guru of the Art of Living movement, in a bid to give it a global appeal.

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Other five appointed members are environmentalist Sunita Narain, retired judge of the J&K High Court, Justice G.D. Sharma, santoor maestro Bhajan Sopori, a former Jammu University professor and a Sanskrit scholar. The board will manage the shrine of Lord Shiva at the height of 13,500 feet, located in south Kashmir.

Allotment of 100 acres to SASB by the government on May 6 last year triggered a violent agitation across the state, both for and against the allotment, leaving in its trail 53 people dead, several hundred wounded and a polarised, fractured state.