Yann / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped.
Madhya Pradesh will build a Vanvasi Ram Lok at Chitrakoot and a Ram Raja Lok at Orchha on the lines of Ujjain's Mahakal Lok, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav announced during Diwali visits to both towns on November 7. No budget or timeline has been announced for either project.
At Chitrakoot in Satna district, where Lord Ram is believed to have spent much of his exile, the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone of an ₹81.17 crore four lane road from Chitrakoot Dham to Gupt Godavari. In Orchha, he prayed at the Ram Raja Sarkar temple and asked officials to complete the Ram Raja Lok within the set time.
Ujjain shows what such a corridor can do, and what it demands. When Mahakal Lok opened in October 2022, the Prime Minister's Office expected the temple's annual footfall of 1.5 crore to double. Between January 1 and December 15, 2025, the temple committee counted 5.5 crore devotees, Swarajya reported. Tourist visits to Ujjain rose from 5.28 crore in 2023 to 8.14 crore in 2025, according to state tourism figures.
The city around the shrine changed far less. Roads, parking and rooms lagged until the Simhastha 2028 works began. In the last week of 2025, more than seven lakh devotees had darshan, and cars entering Ujjain doubled from about 6,000 to 12,000 a day.
Orchha is a far smaller town, and its palaces and temples on the Betwa are on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage sites. How a corridor built to draw crowds will fit around protected monuments is the question its plans, once made public, will have to answer.
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