The idol of infant Ram – Ram Lalla – at Ayodhya will keep warm this winter as authorities have installed a blower after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad demanded adequate protection for the deity, the Hindustan Times reported on Sunday.
However, the Hindutva group list of demand also included warm clothes for the idol and his three brothers and a quilt for Hanuman, so that they “can counter the cold weather”. The idols are present in the makeshift temple built in 1992 on the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya.
After the VHP threatened to protest if the demands were not met, Ayodhya’s Divisional Commissioner Manoj Mishra got the blower installed for the idol.
“Our demand has been fulfilled partially,” VHP spokesperson Sharad Sharma told the Hindustan Times. “Ram Lalla has been provided with a blower. We are waiting for the district administration to arrange warm clothes.”
The idols are currently clad in old woollen clothes. The temple’s head priest, Satyendra Das, said the idols used to get plenty of clothes from devotees for years, until it was prohibited in 2005 after an attempted militant attack. Das now wants the administration to lift the ban to solve the “problem of shortage of clothes for Ram Lalla and his brothers”.
Four sets of clothes, one each for the four brothers, are needed every day.
A heater was installed at another temple in Ayodhya this week to help the deity in the “intense cold weather”, ANI had reported.
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