With West Bengal entering election mode, the state is set to get its own Ram Temple, and an invitation for the Bhoomi Poojan is likely to be extended to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The proposed temple will be built on private land that has been donated to Shri Krittibas Ram Mandir Trust. The trust has said that the project is based on public participation rather than small-scale fundraising. As part of this effort, Hindu devotees in Shantipur town of Nadia district, where the temple is proposed, have been encouraged to bring bricks inscribed with the slogan Jai Shri Ram to the temple site.
According to the trust, representatives of the BJP and the RSS were invited to the site earlier this week. A meeting of the trust was held where it was decided that the Bhoomi Poojan would take place on a date suitable to the prime minister’s schedule. Trust secretary Litton Bhattacharya told News18 that a brick bearing Jai Shri Ram would be placed at the site on the day of the ceremony.
Bhattacharya said the prime minister would be invited through senior BJP leaders. A board related to the temple has also been installed outside the BJP national headquarters in Delhi.
The land for the project, measuring more than 21 acres, was earlier owned by Bhattacharya and later transferred to the trust. He claimed that the trust has already collected around one hundred crore rupees, which it estimates as the cost of construction. He added that the trust did not depend on public appeals for donations and took a swipe at former TMC MLA Humayun Kabir, who is behind a Babri Masjid replica project in Murshidabad.
The trust has said that the Bengal Ram Temple will be different from the Ayodhya Ram Temple. According to its official website, the temple aims to preserve the legacy of Krittibas Ojha, a medieval Bengali poet known for composing the Bengali version of the Ramayan. The Krittivasi Ramayan played a major role in spreading devotional traditions in Bengal and shaping Bengali literature and culture. The temple plans to highlight this distinctly Bengali interpretation of Ram and the Ramayan.
The trust has also outlined a range of social and educational activities. These include spiritual education for children, leadership workshops for young people rooted in religious values, monthly programmes for women empowerment, regular religious discourses, weekly satsang and kirtan, yoga and wellness activities, skill development initiatives and scholarships.
The trust has also claimed that the original six-hundred-year-old manuscript written by Krittibas Ojha was earlier kept in France and has now been moved to the Netherlands through the efforts of the trust’s president, Arindam Bhattacharjee. According to Litton Bhattacharya, the manuscript could be brought back to Bengal once the temple is completed.
Despite efforts to distance the project from the Babri Masjid replica planned in Murshidabad, political comparisons are likely. Humayun Kabir laid the foundation stone for the mosque replica in Rejinagar on December 6 last year, which led to political controversy. Reports suggest that more than one crore thirty lakh rupees were collected for that project by early December 2025. Construction is scheduled to begin on February 11, 2026, amid security concerns.
