A day after the grand 'Pran Pratishtha' ceremony, Ayodhya's Ram Mandir was opened for the general public for the darshan on Tuesday. The newly-built temple witnessed an unprecedented rush as a sea of devotees turned up to have the darshan of Ram Lalla. Thousands of devotees thronged the gates of the Ram Mandir complex and broke the police barricades to enter the temple.
For some hours, security personnel struggled to control the crowd of devotees, many of whom had been queuing up since 3 am. A few hours later, the crowd swelled to several hundreds of thousands, prompting the authorities to suspend the darshan for a few hours.
As the crowd swelled, some social media users suggested the central government give the temple security to paramilitary forces.
Ashiesh Koomar, a social media user, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to hand over the security of the Ram Mandir to the CRPF as in the case of Varanasi. "They (CRPF) can provide error-free security…THERE IS HEAVY RUSH OF DEVOTEES," he said.
Kamal Tiwari, a freelance journalist, requested the chief minister to extend the timings for darshan for a whole week, especially weekends.
Not just Ayodhya's Ram Mandir, crowd was also seen at other Ram temples in different parts of the country.
Amiya, a software developer, shared two pictures of a Ram temple in Bhubaneswar. "Absolute scenes and unreal energy today at Bhubaneswar Ram Mandir. Don't remember the last time I had seen such a crowd and rush here," he said in a tweet.
The consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir was held on Monday. A large number of invitees, including seers and prominent personalities from the country like Mukesh Ambani and Amitabh Bachchan, later had a 'darshan' of the Ram Lalla soon after the consecration ceremony ended.
For the general public, the doors of the temple opened on Tuesday morning. Waiting in the serpentine queues outside the temple were people who had been camping in Ayodhya since before the consecration ceremony, having made long and difficult journeys to reach the temple town.
Also among the crowd was Nitish Kumar from Bihar's Madhepura district, who cycled more than 600 kilometers to reach Ayodhya. "There is a massive rush but I am hopeful I will get a chance to have ‘darshan’ today. I will start my journey back once my wish is fulfilled. Though I couldn’t go to the temple on Monday, what a day it was to be in Ayodhya," he told PTI.
(With inputs from PTI)