- Thursday, November 28, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
The Diwali celebration of the Yogi Adityanath-led government in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday (23) is set to be a mega affair which will also see the presence of prime minister Narendra Modi.
At the event, which will see lighting of 18 lakh (1.8 million) ‘diyas’ (earthen lamps) and inauguration of as many as 66 projects worth Rs 4,000 crore (£433.3 million) in Ayodhya, which is known to be the birthplace of Lord Rama.
Modi is set to light the first ‘diya’ in Ayodhya, where also the Ram Temple is under construction.
This will be Modi’s first visit to the Deepotsav festival since its beginning in 2017, the year when Adityanath first became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Adityanath, who hails from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won his second mandate earlier this year and this year’s Deepotsav festival is set to be observed ahead of the municipal elections likely to be held in December, ThePrint reported.
Fifteen makeshifts ‘dwar’ or gates have been set up, each dedicated to characters from the Hindu epic of Ramayana, to give the event a feel of Diwali being celebrated during ‘Treta Yuga’ (one of the four world eras), an official from the state tourism department told ThePrint.
The projects to be inaugurated at the event include a memorial park dedicated to Suriratna (also known as Heo Hwang-ok), who, according to several South Korean accounts, was a princess from Ayodhya who went to Korea thousands of years ago and started the Karak dynasty there, the report added.
Other projects include an auditorium to be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 489 lakh (£529,822); the Ayodhya Peyjal Yojana (Ayodhya water scheme) worth Rs 5,457 lakh (£5.9 million), a new dairy unit at an estimated cost of Rs 6,400 lakh (£6.9 million), and the Ayodhya driving training institute at an estimated cost of Rs 857 lakh (£928,543).
The Deepotsav event has made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the past two years, first by lighting over five lakh ‘diyas’ (0.5 million) in 2020, and then breaking its own record by lighting over nine lakh (0.9 million) diyas last year.
While the official target for this year was to light 12 lakh (1.2 million) diyas, sources in the state tourism department told the media earlier this week that the number is likely to reach 18 lakh (1.8 million), with diyas being lit along the ghats (river banks) of Ayodhya and across the district.
Chief minister Adityanath on Wednesday met officials in Ayodhya to review preparations for the Deepotsav event and visited its different venues.
Foreign artistes and dignitaries are also expected to be a part of the event,
