Religious fervour sweeps Panipat on eve of Pran Pratishtha event at Ram Temple

Tribune News Service

Mukesh Tandon

Panipat, January 21

Braving severe cold wave, thousands of people, chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’, gathered in the evening to mark the Ram Shobha Yatra on the eve of the Pran Pratishtha programme at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The replica of the temple — 15-ft-long and 8-ft-wide, and made by artists from Mumbai — was the centre of attraction.

CM Manohar Lal Khattar arrived late in the evening for the programme and addressing the gathering said over one lakh people were present and that they had made the evening historical a day before the Pran Pratishtha.

“Lord Ram is not only a man, he is a culture and a country and encompasses all the goodness in his name,” he said. The CM announced that the Railway Road Chowk would now be Maharishi Valmiki Chowk, and the Gohana Road Chowk would be Prabhu Shri Ram Chowk.

The traffic was stopped on one side of the toll plaza along the Panipat-Delhi road. Though no untoward incident was reported during the programme, the arrangements by the people and the administration seemed insufficient in front of the large sea of devotees. Aadi Yogi-fame Sufi singer, Kailash Kher, Haryanvi Sufi singer Gajender Phogat and several other singers presented ‘bhakti’ songs from various stages set up around a 2.5 km stretch of the yatra.

Apart from this, 3-D paintings of Lord Ram, Lord Shiva and Lord Hanuman were put up on walls and pillars under the elevated highway. Hundreds of quintals of flower petals were showered on the yatra. The Nasik Dhol was a huge draw and 51,000 ‘diyas’ were lit at Sanjay Chowk.

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