Shakti Peeth Parikalpana (Chhattisgarh Shaktipeeth Project)

What is Shakti Peeth Parikalpana?

Shakti Peeth Parikalpana, referred to locally as the Shaktipeeth Pariyojana, is a project of the Culture Department of the Government of Chhattisgarh to develop five of the state's most visited goddess temples into planned pilgrimage destinations with corridor-style facilities. The Chhattisgarh state budget presented in February 2024 announced the project and carried an initial provision of Rs 5 crore to prepare plans for the five sites.

The stated model is the temple corridor approach used at Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi and Mahakal Lok in Ujjain: widen and clean the approach, create a decongested darshan queue, add pilgrim amenities, and treat the temple and its surroundings as one designed precinct rather than a building surrounded by unplanned construction.

The five Shakti Peeths in the project

• Mahamaya Devi, Ratanpur, Bilaspur district, the historic capital of the Kalchuri rulers and the best known Shakti Peeth in the plains of Chhattisgarh.
• Maa Bamleshwari, Dongargarh, Rajnandgaon district, a hilltop temple reached by a long stairway and a ropeway, which draws its largest crowds during the two Navratris.
• Maa Danteshwari, Dantewada. The presiding deity of the Bastar region and the temple around which the Bastar Dussehra is organised.
• Maa Chandrahasini (Chandrasenee), Chandrapur: Sakti district, on the bank of the Mahanadi.
• Mahamaya Devi, Ambikapur, Surguja district, the temple that gives Ambikapur its name.

Who benefits from Shakti Peeth Parikalpana, and who is not eligible?

Who gains from the project

• Pilgrims visiting the five temples, through better roads, parking, lighting, drinking water, toilets, shelter sheds and organised darshan queues.
• Temple trusts and committees at the five sites, whose premises are upgraded at government cost.
• Shopkeepers, prasad and flower sellers, guides, hotel and homestay owners and transport operators in Ratanpur, Dongargarh, Dantewada, Chandrapur and Ambikapur.
• Registered construction, electrical, landscaping and consultancy firms that win tendered work packages.

Who cannot apply

• Individual citizens cannot apply for any cash benefit, subsidy, pension or grant under Shakti Peeth Parikalpana. There is no beneficiary registration, no application form and no eligibility certificate.
• Temples other than the five named sites are not eligible under this particular project. Other religious places in Chhattisgarh are taken up under separate tourism, heritage or Swadesh Darshan works.
• Priests, pandas and temple staff are not eligible for a personal honorarium under this project. Any such payment, where it exists, comes from the temple trust or from a separate departmental order.
• Firms without valid statutory registration and the required class of contractor registration are not eligible to bid for works.

This is the single most common misunderstanding about the scheme. Search traffic for "Shakti Peeth Parikalpana form" and "Shaktipeeth yojana registration" is high, but no such form exists. Anyone charging a fee to "register" you under this project is running a fraud.

How to apply for work under Shakti Peeth Parikalpana

Shakti Peeth Parikalpana has an institutional route only. Firms and agencies follow these steps:

1. Register on the Chhattisgarh e-procurement portal. Obtain a Class 3 digital signature certificate in the firm's name and complete supplier registration, since all state tenders are submitted electronically.
2. Watch the tender notices of the Culture Department, the Chhattisgarh Tourism Board and the Public Works Department, and the notice boards of the collectorates of Bilaspur, Rajnandgaon, Dantewada, Sakti and Surguja, where site-level packages are floated.
3. Download the bid document for the relevant package, check the class of contractor registration required, the earnest money deposit and the completion period.
4. Submit the technical and financial bid online before the closing date, attaching firm registration, GST certificate, PAN, contractor registration, turnover proof and past work experience certificates.
5. Attend the technical bid opening, and if qualified, the financial bid opening. The work order is issued to the successful bidder by the executing agency.

Temple trusts and gram panchayats that want a specific facility taken up at one of the five sites should route a written proposal through the district collector, who forwards it to the Culture Department. Panchayat and municipal resolutions carry more weight than individual letters.

How can a pilgrim actually benefit?

A pilgrim's practical route to a subsidised visit to these temples is not this project but the state's separate travel schemes. The Mukhyamantri Tirth Darshan Yojana, run by the Social Welfare Department and restarted on 28 March 2025 with a Rs 15 crore provision, arranges free group pilgrimages for senior citizens aged 60 and above along with widows and destitute women. The Shri Ramlala Darshan Yojana arranges subsidised travel to Ayodhya. Applications for those schemes are made at the janpad panchayat, municipal body or Social Welfare office in your district.

Shakti Peeth Parikalpana improves the destination. The travel schemes pay for the journey. They are administered by different departments and are applied for separately.

How to track progress on the project

1. Check the Culture Department website, cgculture.in, for departmental orders, tender notices and annual reports.
2. Check the district collectorate website of the district that holds the temple — for example the Bilaspur site for Ratanpur and the Rajnandgaon site for Dongargarh; where site-level works and review meetings are published.
3. File a Right to Information application with the Public Information Officer of the Culture Department at Mantralaya, Mahanadi Bhawan, Naya Raipur, if you want the sanctioned amount and physical progress for a particular temple. The RTI fee is Rs 10.

Why do announcements about this project vary so much?

Reporting on the Chhattisgarh Shakti Peeth project mixes three separate things, and readers should keep them apart:

• Shakti Peeth Parikalpana itself, the Culture Department's five-temple plan with a Rs 5 crore starting budget provision.
• The Bhoramdev Corridor Development Project at Kawardha, sanctioned under the central Swadesh Darshan 2.0 scheme at an estimated cost of about Rs 146 crore, whose foundation stone was laid in January 2026. Bhoramdev is a Shiva temple and is not one of the five Shakti Peeths.
• The Rajim temple complex corridor, discussed separately for the Rajim Kumbh site in Gariaband district.

Because these are announced by the same ministers in the same press events, news reports often merge the figures. Treat only the Rs 5 crore budget line as the confirmed allocation for Shakti Peeth Parikalpana itself; site-specific corridor costs at individual temples are sanctioned separately and are announced case by case.

When are the five temples busiest?

Anyone planning a visit should know the calendar, because the crowd at these five sites is not spread evenly through the year:

• Chaitra Navratri, in March or April, and Sharadiya Navratri, in September or October, are the two peak periods at all five temples. Ratanpur and Dongargarh see their largest gatherings in these nine-day windows, with manoranth jyoti kalash lit in the thousands.
• Bastar Dussehra, the long festival centred on Maa Danteshwari at Dantewada and Jagdalpur, runs for several weeks around the Dussehra period and is one of the longest festivals in India.
• Ordinary weekends and full-moon days bring moderate local crowds.

Corridor works at any of the five sites are normally scheduled to avoid the Navratri windows, so a visitor in March or October is more likely to find the temple functioning normally and a visitor in the monsoon months more likely to find construction barricades. Check with the temple trust or the district administration before planning a group visit during a construction phase.

Where to raise a grievance

• Culture Department, Government of Chhattisgarh, Mantralaya, Mahanadi Bhawan, Naya Raipur Atal Nagar, for questions on the project, tenders and sanctioned works. Departmental contact details are listed on cgculture.in.
• District Collector of Bilaspur, Rajnandgaon, Dantewada, Sakti or Surguja, for problems at a specific temple site, such as unsafe scaffolding, encroachment, or work stalled midway.
• Chhattisgarh Public Grievance portal and the state CM helpline, for a written complaint with a tracking number.

No fee is charged by the government for any information about this project. Do not pay anyone who claims to be able to enrol you as a beneficiary, because the project has no beneficiaries in the individual sense.