Who Is Chandrakant Sompura? Ayodhya Ram Mandir Architect Conferred Padma Shri Award
Chandrakant Sompura hails from a family of architects who have designed more than 200 temples across the country over centuries. He came up with the Ram Mandir design in 1987.
The Central government on Saturday announced the list of recipients for Padma Awards 2025 on the eve of Republic Day. President Droupadi Murmu approved the conferment of 139 Padma awards, comprising seven Padma Vibhushan, 19 Padma Bhushan and 113 Padma Shri Awards.
One of the Padma Shri recipients is Chandrakant Sompura, 81, the architect of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Sompura belongs to a family of temple architects who have designed over 200 such structures across the country over centuries.
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It was Sompura’s grandfather Prabhashankar Sompura who designed the revived Somnath temple in Gujarat’s Prabhas Patan in 1949. The Sompura family has a long list of temple creations to their credit, including the Akshardham temple complex in Gujarat, the Swaminarayan Mandir in Mumbai and the famed Birla Mandir in Kolkata.
According to Times Now, he is the 15th generation of a family that has been into designing temple architecture in India and abroad. The creation of the Birla Mandir in Kolkata had reported impressed the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) late president Ashok Singhal.
How Sompura Came Up With Ram Mandir Design?
In an interview from 2020, Sompura revealed that he was contacted by Ashok Singhal through the Birla family to come up with a design for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya around 33 years ago.
“We met and discussed the construction of the temple and had to go to Ayodhya to recce the land. With so much security present, I had to disguise myself as a devotee and measure the area with footsteps to make the masterplan," he told Outlook India.
He came up with a design for the Ram Temple in 1987, which was agreed upon in a meeting of saints during the Kumbh Mela in 1990. The design of the Ram temple was later upgraded by Sompura and his sons Ashish and Nikhil. Ashish said the temple was created with a 3D structural analysis by the Central Building Research Institute in Roorkee to ensure that it could withstand strong earthquakes.
The Sompura family later explained that the temple was constructed using a traditional interlocking stone process and that Larsen & Toubro, the company that was awarded the contract, had to be persuaded of this method, according to The Indian Express.
The Ram Mandir, designed in the traditional Nagara architectural style, measures 380 feet in length, 250 feet in width and reaches a height of 161 feet. Within the temple, the sanctum sanctorum houses the childhood form of Bhagwan Shri Ram (the idol of Shri Ram Lalla), while on the first floor, there is Shri Ram Darbar.
The consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla idol in Ayodhya was held on January 22 last year, marking the end of 500 years of exile for the Lord’s devotees in India and across the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took part in the ‘pran pratishtha’ rituals in the presence of Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.
The first anniversary of the consecration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was celebrated as ‘Pratishtha Dwadashi’ on January 11, 2025. The construction work is due to be completed by June this year.
Padma Awards 2025 Announced Today
A total of 139 names were announced – seven for Padma Vibhushan, 19 for Padma Bhushan, and 113 for Padma Shri. The awardees were recognised for their excellence in diverse fields like art, social work, science, medicine, and more, highlighting their contributions across various sectors.
Medicine expert Duvvur Nageshwar Reddy from Telangana, retired Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar from Chandigarh, and late singer Sharda Sinha from Bihar were honoured with the Padma Vibhushan.
Another name that caught everyone’s attention was Bhim Singh Bhavesh, a social worker from Bhojpur who worked tirelessly for the upliftment of the Musahar community, one of society’s most marginalised groups, for the past 22 years through his foundation Nayee Asha’.
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