Most of the ten Mahavidyas are known far more widely as a list than as objects of active worship. Bagalamukhi is an exception. Her principal seats are working temples with heavy daily traffic: the Pitambara Peeth at Datia in Madhya Pradesh, a twentieth century foundation closely associated with the ascetic who established it; the temple at Nalkheda in Agar Malwa district, which local tradition connects with the Mahabharata; and Bankhandi in Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh. Her rites are also performed at temples where she is not the principal deity.
What sustains that is the specificity of what she is asked for. A practitioner approaching Bagalamukhi generally has an adversary, a court date or a campaign in view, and the tradition supplies a homa and a mantra practice addressed to that situation rather than to liberation in general. Politicians commissioning her rites before elections is a recurring item in Indian news reporting, which is unusual publicity for a tantric goddess and says something about where she sits between esoteric and popular religion.
The tradition itself notes the hazard. Rites of arrest belong to the abhichara category, works directed at another person, and the manuals attach qualifications, conditions and warnings to them; the practitioner is held to carry the consequence of what is done. The atlas records that this is how the practice is described from within, and describes it rather than instructing anyone in it.