Nearly 7,500 people are expected at the opening ceremony and by the end of the year, a staggering 100,000 devotees per day are predicted to visit Ayodhya which now has a brand new airport.
Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh): The highly-anticipated ‘Pran Pratishtha (consecration)’ of Lord Ram Lalla is all set to be held in the holy town of Ayodhya on January 22, following all religious protocols, and led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The temple, a three-story structure clad in pink sandstone, stretches across 2.9 hectares (7.2 acres) in a 28-hectare (70-acre) complex. It will have a 1.3-meter (4.25-foot) idol of Lord Ram.
From Times Square in New York to Chowk in Lucknow, the Pran Pratishtha ceremony is set to resonate globally.
The Pran Pratishtha will be held in the ‘Abhijit Muhurat’ in the afternoon. The formal procedures of pre-consecration sacraments began from January 16 and will continue till January 21.
Around 121 Acharyas will conduct the rituals. Ganeshwar Shastri Dravid will be overseeing, coordinating, anchoring and directing all the proceedings of the ‘Anushthaan’ and the principal Acharya will be Shri Laxmikant Mathuranath Dixit of Kashi.
The consecration programme will be conducted in the presence of Prime Minister Modi, RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, Governor of Uttar Pradesh Anandiben Patel, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other dignitaries.
Acharyas of all schools of Bhartiya spiritualism, religion, sect, system of worship, tradition, seers of more than 150 traditions as well as leading figures of tribal traditions will be present to witness the consecration ceremony.
After the completion of the consecration programme in the sanctum sanctorum, all the witnesses will have darshan, respectively.
Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has appealed to all Ram devotees to decorate the temples in their vicinity on January 22 and perform bhajan, puja, kirtan and aarti, etc., as per the worship protocols of the deity of the temple.
Renowned instrumentalists from various states across the country will perform in Ayodhya during the Pran Pratishtha ceremony.
The existing idols of Ram Lalla and his three brothers, which have been worshipped for the past 74 years now at the makeshift temple, will be placed in front of the new idol inside the ‘garbh griha’ of the Ram Temple.
The new idol of Ram Lalla sculpted by Mysuru-based Arun Yogiraj has been selected for installation at the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
The new idol whose Pran Pratishtha ceremony will be done is made of stone and “weighs somewhere between 150-200 kgs’.
The idol depicts the deity as a five-year-old boy in standing posture and it will be placed at its ‘aasan’ in the sanctum sanctorum.
A grand show of fireworks and lighting of earthen diyas at Ayodhya’s Saryu ghat will mark the Pran Pratishtha ceremony.
Soon after the Pran Pratishtha ceremony, nearly eight lakh laddoos from the courts of Lord Vishwanath in Varanasi and Mahakal in Madhya Pradesh will be distributed in and around Varanasi.
Iconic global landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Times Square in New York are expected to draw large crowds tuning into the ceremony.
Parisian viewers will experience the event in the early morning, while those in New York will gather around midnight for this grand spectacle.
