The Ram mandir issue was the BJP’s calling card for more than three decades. So when it fulfilled its promise of building a temple in Ayodhya—whose consecration took place earlier this year in January, just a few months before the Lok Sabha elections—it seemed like a major victory for the saffron party. But the election result has produced a major twist, where the BJP lost in Ayodhya by over 50,000 votes. In January 2024, two weeks before the Ram mandir consecration, Outlook’s Tanul Thakur visited the temple town and found that, despite all the fervour surrounding the temple, disenchantment wasn’t too far from the perceived ‘development’.