What’s the job of a public broadcaster? For Doordarshan, it’s airing Ram temple’s daily aarti

DD National will live telecast the aarti or prayer rituals from Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya everyday at 6:30 am, said the public broadcaster in a post on X. “Now everyday lord Ram lalla’s divine darshan!” read the post.     

A DD National official told The Hindu that the channel had been trying to get permission for the live broadcast.  

On the day of the temple’s consecration on January 22, the channel had clocked more than one crore views, and had deployed over 40 cameras for the live footage shot in high resolution 4K, earlier used for the G2O Summit.

From 21 days before the large-scale inauguration ceremony, the channel had also been broadcasting special programmes and news bulletins centred around the Ram temple, in the build up to the event. These included daily Ayodhya round-up, guest discussions, special stories and vox-pop, some of which continued even after the inauguration ceremony. 

It also got at least two original songs crafted for the ceremony, and roped in author Neelesh Misra for a storytelling series from Ayodhya, focusing on the story of Ram’s return to his kingdom. 

More than 75 lakh people have visited the temple since its inauguration, although the temple is still under construction and is expected to be completed by December this year.

Newslaundry had extensively covered all about the new Ayodhya – from homes demolished in preparation for the grand event to the power tussle between sadhus and the Modi government-nominated trust, and murky land deals.

To know what happened inside the Big Media circus in Ayodhya, watch this.      

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