Yogi government to float global tender for Ayodhya master plan

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Dec 20, 2020

To elevate Ayodhya as a world class tourist destination, the Yogi Adityanath government will soon float a global tender for picking up a consultant to prepare the master plan for the sleepy town.

While the Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA) has prepared the bidding documents for selecting a global consultant for the project, the state level committee is currently vetting the documents.

The state government has constituted three different committees viz. monitoring committee, bid evaluation committee and implementation committee for accelerating the works in this regard.

Chairing a review meeting recently, UP chief secretary R K Tiwari has directed senior officials to expedite the process of selecting the consultant so that the work on the composite development of the Ayodhya City could begin.

After coming to power in March 2017, the Yogi government had renamed Faizabad district as Ayodhya, while upgrading Ayodhya town as a municipal corporation for improving the civic standards and infusing more government funds.

Apart from the proposed construction of Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya, there are a slew of other projects in the pipeline to develop the town as a future tourist hub with good road and air connectivity.

On August 5, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had performed the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ram temple, thus setting the tone for a speedier pace of infra and tourism projects. The temple project would span nearly 85,000 sq ft and rank among the biggest Hindu temples in the world. It will have a capacity to accommodate 50,000 devotees at a time.

The Ram temple construction committee has set up an eight-member panel of India’s top engineers and structural experts headed by IIT-Delhi’s former Director V S Raju to supervise its foundation laying. The other members include CBRI-Rookie Director N Gopal Krishnan, NIT-Surat Director S R Gandhi, IIT-Guwahati Director T G Sitaram, IIT-Delhi’s professor emeritus B Bhattacharji, TCI advisor A P Mull, besides Manu Santhanam of IIT-Madras and Pradipt Banerjee of IIT-Bombay.

The state has also decided to expand the geographical jurisdiction of the ADA by bringing several new villages in Ayodhya and the adjoining districts under its purview. The Ayodhya airstrip is being developed to handle wide bodied scheduled flights and thus put the town on the national and international tourism map.

Another mega project proposed by the Adityanath government is the world’s tallest 221 metres Lord Ram’s bronze statue in Ayodhya. Besides, the government has mooted a ‘New Ayodhya’ township project spanning 500 acres comprising residential enclaves, parks, luxury hotels, shopping arcades etc.