That the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya would be born with a silver spoon was never in doubt with the secular republic bending over backwards to celebrate the birth of a religious shrine in a place where a mosque stood before it was demolished.

Now it turns out that the Ram temple could be born with a silver brick, if a tweet deleted by a BJP parliamentarian proves as prescient as the divine prophecies that boom from the sky in mythology.

Lallu Singh, the BJP leader who represents in the Lok Sabha the Faizabad seat that covers Ayodhya, tweeted on Tuesday a picture of a silver brick wrapped in a silver foil.

The words “Prime Minister Narendra Damodar Das Modi” are written in Hindi on the silver brick, specifically mentioning the date (August 5) and the time “12:15:15”. The weight too is mentioned: “22600 gram” (22.6kg).

If it means 22.6kg of silver was used to make the brick, it will cost over Rs 14 lakh at current market prices. The amount is higher than the purported cost (Rs 10 lakh) of the gifted monogrammed suit that Modi wore in 2015 and led to the coinage “suit-boot-ki-sarkar”. The suit eventually set a record at an auction and fetched Rs 4.31 crore.

The MP, however, later deleted the tweet on the brick. But a Twitter handle, Friends of RSS, too had tweeted the same image of the silver brick, mentioning that it would be laid by the Prime Minister on August 5.

Till Tuesday night, the Prime Minister’s Office had neither confirmed nor contested the authenticity of the brick.

Privately, members of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, tasked to oversee the construction of the temple, had said the Prime Minister would indeed be in Ayodhya for the August 5 “bhoomi pujan” that will kick off the construction of the temple.

Lallu Singh, the MP who deleted his tweet, had said that he too would be at the ceremony and that this was a matter of good fortune for him.

Sources said Prime Minister Modi was expected to go to Ayodhya and lay the silver brick but did not want others to confirm the programme.

“The confirmation will come from the PM’s office at the right time. Nobody else is allowed to do so on behalf of the PM,” a BJP leader said, explaining why the MP had to delete his tweet.