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‘Ram temple will be 270 feet long, built in Nagara style’: VHP
The Supreme Court on Saturday unanimously awarded the disputed site in Ayodhya to Ram Lalla Virajman and directed the Centre to form a trust within three months to facilitate construction of the temple.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas have had a blueprint of the proposed Ram temple ready for years and now hope to get to work on it.
The Supreme Court on Saturday unanimously awarded the disputed site in Ayodhya to Ram Lalla Virajman (the child deity) and directed the Centre to form a trust within three months to facilitate construction of the temple.
Giving details of the blueprint, VHP regional spokesperson Sharad Sharma on Sunday said the two-storey temple will be 270 feet long, 135 feet wide and constructed in the Nagara style, a prominent architecture genre of North India.
The temple design was conceived in such a manner that it would be constructed by using stone slabs and no cement and iron would be used, he said.
The 125-feet high temple would have 106 pillars on each of the two floors, they said.
Annu Bhai Sompura, who is incharge of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas Karyashaala, had earlier said the temple’s pillars on the ground floor will be 16.5 feet high, while those on the second floor will be 14.5 feet high. The shrine will have a magnificent ‘shikhar’ (spire), a prominent feature of the Nagara style of architecture, he had added. Sompura has been looking after the Karyashaala for 20 years.
The temple’s walls will be made of stone slabs measuring six feet in width, he said. Replicas of the proposed temple at Karsevakpuram and at the Nyas Karyashaala are a centre of attraction for South Indian pilgrims who come to Ayodhya in large numbers.
Hazari Prasad, a VHP member who takes care of the Ram temple model at Karsevakpuram and literature related with the temple movement, said, “The proposed Ram temple will have five entrances: Singh Dwar, Nritya Mandap, Rang Mandap, Pooja Room and Garbh Griha, where devotees will also be able to do ‘parikrama’.
“Lord Ram’s idol will be placed on the ground floor of the temple,” Prasad added.
The VHP is putting in place all the paraphernalia to fast-track the pending works, like carving of stones so that there is no shortfall of material once construction of the temple starts.
“Around 1.75 lakh cubic feet of sandstone will be required for construction of the temple. Around 65% work related with the carving of stones has been completed,” said Sharma, who operates out of karsewakpuram.
Sharma also said all stones for construction of the temple will be sourced from Bansi Pahadpur, Rajasthan.
“Till date, all stones have been brought from Bansi Pahadpur in Rajasthan. Pink stones are the speciality of this place,” Sharma said.
Chandrakant Sompura of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, was the architect of the temple, he said.
Sharma said the credit for getting the design conceptualised went to the late VHP leader Ashok Singhal.
“Long back, Ashok Singhal had brought Chandrakant Sompura to the makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya especially to get the proposed Ram temple designed,” said Sharma.
