KCR inaugurates Yadadri temple, fruit of 5.5 years toil

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao inaugurated the renovated Yadadri temple complex on Monday amid chanting of Vedic mantras by priests and rithwiks. Hours later, the temple was thrown open to devotees after a gap of 66 months. Chants of "Govinda Govinda" and "Om Sri Lakshmi Narasimhaya Namaha" filled the air.

Accompanied by his wife Shobha and family members, ministers, MLAs, MLCs, TRS leaders and officials, the Chief Minister participated in the 'Mahakumbha Samprokshana'. Seated on a platform built at the top of the temple's Vimana Rajagopuram, the Chief Minister performed Kalasha pujas for over an hour. Similar ceremonies were held at the other six gopurams.

Prior to that, the Chief Minister participated in the "shobha yatra" (procession), carrying the idols of the presiding deities from the Balalayam, where they had been installed during the renovation work, to the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. The Chief Minister himself carried the palanquin of the idols.

Chandrashekar Rao, his wife Shobha, daughter and MLC K. Kavitha, Rajya Sabha member J. Santosh Kumar and grandson Himanshu arrived in Yadadri by helicopter and went to the temple premises by a bus. The Chief Minister spent nearly five hours on the temple premises.

The rituals began with a ‘Maha Poornahuthi’ at 9 am. The ‘Samprokshana’ was performed with holy water collected from different rivers. In a well coordinated manner, 92 rithwiks performed ‘Samprokshana’ to the Sri Sudarshana Swarna Chakra atop the Divya Vimanam and the Swarna Kalashams on the six gopurams at the same time.

While the Chief Minister performed the pujas atop the Vimana Gopuram, ministers G. Jagadish Reddy, A. Indrakaran Reddy, Koppula Eshwar, Puvvada Ajay, Ch. Malla Reddy and S. Niranjan Reddy did so at the other six gopurams.

The Chief Minister joined the rituals at around 9.45 am. Upon receiving the Veda Ashirvachanam from the priests and rithwiks, he performed a special puja soon after entering the temple complex.

After the Kalasha pujas, Chandrashekar Rao and his wife performed the first puja to the presiding deities inside the sanctum sanctorum. He also performed a special puja to the Dwajasthabham. The Chief Minister and ministers felicitated the architects, engineers and officials who worked on the renovation after having lunch with ministers and officials on the temple premises.

Interestingly, no plaque was unveiled to mark the reopening of the temple complex. It is learnt that the officials had proposed to put up two plaques on the temple premises with the Chief Minister’s name to be unveiled on the occasion. The Chief Minister turned down the idea.