Prominent BJP leaders, including home minister Amit Shah and others, will watch the ceremony live from various temples across the country with common people. This is being seen as a gesture of solidarity with millions of Ram devotees, who wanted to be in the holy town for the event but were advised to plan their visit after Jan 22.
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‘Sandhya Aarti’ performed at Saryu Ghat in Ayodhya on eve of Ram temple ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony
Kashi Dom Raja (the king of the cremation ground) Choudhary and his family members, including mother Jamuna Devi and wife Sapna Chowdhary, have reached Ayodhya.
A religious procession amid the beats of ‘damru’ was taken out from the cremation ground to mark his departure from Varanasi on Saturday. The family members carried a silver ‘trishul’ and an offering for the Ram temple.
BJP leaders, meanwhile, will witness the ceremony live from various temples. Shah, along with his family, will watch live-streaming of the three-hour ceremony from Birla temple, Mandir Marg, in the national capital and also celebrate Diwali by lighting earthen lamps when the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony takes place.
BJP president JP Nadda will be at Jhandewalan temple in Delhi. L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and those who fought the court case, including Ravi Shankar Prasad, are among a few leaders from the party invited for the event.
Even among state leaders, other than UP CM Yogi Adityanath, only ministers assigned responsibilities like deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak will be present in Ayodhya.
People from different caste backgrounds, including from the most backward to Dalit Samaj, have been selected to perform rituals as ‘yajman’ at the pran pratishtha ceremony.
Mahadev Gaikwad, the face of over 60 million members of the Ghumantu community across 315 nomadic and 198 denotified tribes of India, is a yajman selected for the rituals.
So is Dilip Valmiki, a member of the Valmiki Samaj listed as Scheduled Caste in India, who is proud of his perennial association with Lord Ram and the story of Ramayana which was written by Maharishi Valmiki.