Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the bhoomi pujan at the site for the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5 and this will be telecast live by public broadcaster Doordarshan. Sharing details of the upcoming event, the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the Trust constituted to oversee the temple construction, took to Twitter Saturday: “The day PM @narendramodi ji will be in Ayodhya to inaugurate the construction of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir, it will be the most historic moment in the history of independent India. The event will be telecast LIVE on Doordarshan. Other channels will also broadcast the telecast.” Sources in Prasar Bharati said the event will be covered like any other event of the Prime Minister. Vishwa Hindu Parishad national spokesperson Vinod Bansal, in a press statement tweeted Saturday, said the Prime Minister will be in Ayodhya on August 5 and will be “worshipping with revered saints, scholars, trustees and other dignitaries for the grand Janmabhoomi temple of Bhagwan Shri Ram”. Also Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited Ayodhya and inspected arrangements ahead of the bhoomi pujan. Announcing that the Prime Minister will be visiting Ayodhya, he directed authorities to run special cleanliness drives until August 3, and to consider it a Swachhta Abhiyan before Deepawali. He also directed that all Covid protocols be followed. Saying such an occasion for Ayodhya has come “after 500 years”, he urged people to conduct continuous recitation of the Akhand Ramayan in all local temples. He said every household and temple in Ayodhya must celebrate Deepotsava by lighting oil lamps on the night of August 4 and 5. On July 22, Swami Govind Dev Giri, treasurer of the Trust, told media persons that they had invited the Prime Minister to the “bhoomi pujan” and he had accepted it and would be reaching Ayodhya on August 5. READ | Ayodhya 2.0.2.0: ‘Bigger temple, 3 domes, double the sandstone’ He said the “bhoomi pujan” would be around noon and before that, the Prime Minister would offer prayers at Hanuman Garhi and the makeshift temple of the idol of Ramlalla. Keeping in mind the social distancing requirement, a total of 200 people including 150 invitees would be allowed for the “bhoomi pujan”, he said. Incidentally, August 5 will mark one year of the abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the State of Jammu & Kashmir into two Union Territories. Read | In town, waiting for tourists as much as temple Article 370 and the Ram temple were two ideological issues that the BJP, in the NDA’s earlier avatar under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had been forced to place on the backburner due to coalition compulsions. In November 2019, three months after the abrogation of Article 370, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, while settling a decades-old title suit over the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site, directed that it be handed over to a Centre-appointed Trust for construction of a temple and Muslims be given an alternate 5-acre site for a mosque.
