No Lord Ram in Times Square; ad firm refuses to post billboards after Muslim groups' petition

Images of Lord Ram will not be shown on massive digital billboards of Times Square of New York on the day of groundbreaking ceremony for Ram Temple in Ayodhya on August 5. The ad company that manages the billboards has reportedly refused to run the campaign after Muslim groups in the US petitioned against the digital advertisements.

A coalition of Muslim groups claimed that Branded Cities, which manages the digital billboard for NASDAQ at Times Square, will not run images of Lord Ram and 3D portraits of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on August 5, a report by Clarion India said.

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ImanNet, one of the groups in the coalition, had pled before the New York mayor, the City Council of New York, the governor, senators and members of House of Representatives to stop Hindu groups from running the advertisements on Times Square billboards, the report said.

The ad campaign was part of celebrations to the mark the groundbreaking ceremony for Ayodhya Ram temple that will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. President of the American India Public Affairs Committee Jagdish Sewhani had told news agency PTI that the giant Nasdaq screen and the 17,000-square-foot wrap-around LED display screen, considered among the largest continuous exterior displays in the world and the highest-resolution exterior LED screen in Times Square, were to be leased for the campaign.

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Beginning from 8 AM on August 5 till 10 PM, images of the words Jai Shri Ram' in Hindi and English, Lord Ram's portraits and videos, 3D portraits of the temple's design and architecture as well as pictures of the laying of the foundation stone by Modi will be displayed across several billboards.

Meanwhile, temples across the US have announced special events to celebrate the bhumi pujan ceremony on Wednesday, including special prayers. Indian-Americans from in and around Washington DC said that a tableau truck with a big LED display on Sri Ram Mandir will go around the Capitol Hill and the White house on Tuesday night.

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