Meet 78 Years Old Chandrakant Sompura The Main Architect Of Ram Mandir And His Grandfather Who Designed Somnath Mandir

On Aug 5, 2020

New Delhi: A 78 years old Chandrakant Sompura main architect of Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya is the 15th generation of a family that has been into designing temple architecture in India and abroad. You will be pleasantly surprised to know that his grandfather PO Sompura who designed the revived and redone Somnath Mandir in 1949 as it now stands in its full glory on the Gujarat coast.

This Ahmedabad-based family has been into temple architecture and have to their credit the blueprints of 200 temples in India and abroad, including the Akshardham temple complex in Gujarat, the Swaminarayan mandir in Mumbai and the famed Birla Mandir in Kolkata.

In fact, it is this Birla Mandir in Kolkata that had impressed the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)’s now late president Ashok Singhal. He had approached the Birla family in Kolkata and sought references on who is a good architect for the Ram Mandir that will be built later, as he had hoped and striven all his life.

How they approached the disputed site:

But the times were tough for the ones who were fighting for the land to be allocated to the Ram Lalla Viirajman trust, court cases were on, threats abounded.

Chandrakant Made a masterplan for the temple. Earlier Singhal and Sompura approached the saints and gurus during the Allahabad Kumbh in the early 1990s. His plan for the temple was approved. However, the original plan has now been made richer by additions as the scale of the project demanded up-gradation. The plan Sompura and his sons Ashish (49) and his Nikhil (55) submitted last month is almost double the size of the original one.

The temple will have Nagara style architecture:

“Initially, plancwas designed as any ancient temple but in view of the prolonged legal battle that preceded the permission to construct, we decided it had to be much grander,” Ashish one of the architec said.

The temple will retain its original plan of ‘Nagara’ style of temple architecture with the Ram Mandir being three-storeys and of 161 feet height. It will have five-domed mandaps, and one Shikhar, all adhering to the principles of Vastu Shastra.

Chandrakant Sompura has been guiding the team from home due to his age and his sons have taken over the day-to-day work involved in the temple construction such as attending the meetings of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust. The COVID-19 threat means that he will also be unable to attend the Bhoomipujan ceremony today but will watch it live on TV as sons Ashish and Nikhil Sompura will represent him in Ayodhya.

The Sompura sons also says that Larsen and Toubro who have been assigned the work will begin the construction work of the temple and it has to be completed within three to three-and-half years, as per the agreement.