Jammu, March 19 – Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has pledged to keep the duration of the annual Hindu Amarnath pilgrimage two months long, rejecting a separatist leader’s request to cut it short.

‘The pilgrimage period will stay unchanged,’ Abdullah said here late Thursday. ‘It (pilgrimage) benefits the local population economically and is a symbol of Kashmir’s secularism. Kashmir welcomes every visitor.’

This year, the pilgrimage will begin in June-end. The Amarnath shrine board has drawn up plans to care for more than half-a-million pilgrims who visit the cave shrine at a height of 13,500 feet above sea level.

A natural ice lingam, an icon of Lord Shiva, is the main attraction at the shrine.

Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani early this week asked the government to cut down the duration of the pilgrimage from two months and limit the number of pilgrims.

He said the ‘high number of pilgrims and long duration of the pilgrimage damages environment and causes pollution in the fragile Himalayan ecology’.

In 2008, the Kashmir Valley was rocked by protests over a land row involving the shrine board.