The famed Hazratbal shrine found itself at the centre of a storm on Friday after a group of devotees vandalised the national emblem engraved on the inauguration plaque inside the shrine.

The national emblem is widely viewed as an idol in Kashmir, which is why the devotees took umbrage at its installation inside the mosque.

The vandalism came hours after chief minister Omar Abdullah joined the outrage against the lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha-helmed administration’s decision to declare the official Eid-e-Milad holiday a day before the festival on Saturday.

The twin developments pitted the elected government against the LG’s administration and the waqf board, which oversees the management of the shrine and is now headed by a BJP leader. Waqf chairperson Darakshan Andrabi called the vandalism a terrorist act and appeared to blame Omar’s government for it.

The devotees appeared outraged by the installation of the national emblem, an adaptation of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka, on the recently installed inauguration plaque. In common parlance, the emblem is called “potul”, or an idol, in Kashmir and its installation inside the Valley’s most sacred Muslim shrine was bound to trigger a controversy. Hazratbal was recently renovated and inaugurated by Andrabi.

Videos showed a crowd raising religious slogans swooping down on the plaque and hammering the emblem with a stone. The devotees took turns to deface it, reflecting their defiance.

Omar aide Tanvir Sadiq, who is also the MLA of the constituency in which the shrine falls, wrote on X: “...Placing a sculpted figure at the revered Hazratbal Dargah goes against this very belief (monotheism). Sacred spaces must reflect only the purity of Tawheed (monotheism), nothing else.”