Ayodhya temple trust asks sculptors to send their models for Ram statue
Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust — set up for the construction and management of the temple in Ayodhya — has asked the sculptors to send within 15 days their models of the statue, measuring nine to 12 inches.
Top sculptors from the country including Padma Vibushan awardee Sudarshan Sahoo have been roped in to prepare models for the statue of Ram Lalla (the deity in the form of a child) for the under-construction Ram Temple in Ayodhya, people familiar with the development said on Friday.
Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust — set up for the construction and management of the temple in Ayodhya — has asked the sculptors to send within 15 days their models of the statue, measuring nine to 12 inches. The trust will select one of the models to be placed in the Ram Mandir when it is ready. Union home minister Amit Shah said on Thursday the temple will be ready by January 1 next year.
Renowned sculptors like Sahoo and Vasudev Kamath, both from Odisha, KV Maniya of Karnataka and Shashtrayajya Deulkar of Pune will be sending their models of the statue, an official from the trust said.
“Stones from Maharashtra, Odisha and Karnataka have been selected for preparing the idol of Ram Lalla,” said Champat Rai, general secretary of the trust. “The trust will approve the stones after finalising the model of the deity.”
Talking to reporters after a two-day meeting of the Ram Mandir construction committee that ended on Thursday night, Rai said the height of the statue will be about 9 feet.
The trust has contacted top institutes of the country that have expertise in architecture and building design to model the Ram temple’s sanctum sanctorum in such a way that sunlight falls on the forehead of Ram Lalla on every Ram Navmi, on the birth of the deity, at 12 noon, Rai said in November.
A team of experts from CSIR-CBRI (Central Building Research Institute) of Roorkee, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics of Pune, and renowned temple architects has been constituted for the purpose, an official from the trust said.
