From Mahatma Gandhi to Sonia Gandhi and from Sachin Tendulkar to Amitabh Bachchan, there is no dearth of shrines for politicians and celebrities built by their obsequious followers across the country.

By virtue of being the 'Father of the Nation', Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps the earliest to have a temple dedicated to him as early as the 1970s on the outskirts of Sambalpur town in Odisha. The temple was the brainchild of Abhimanyu Kumar, a former MLA, now 91 and bedridden.

The temple, a small structure with a bronze statue of Mahatma, about 3.5 ft high, in a squatting position, was formally dedicated to the nation by Nandini Satpathy, the then Odisha Chief Minister in 1974.

The villagers worship Gandhi the same way they worship any other God. "He is offered flowers and bhog (eatable prasad) and Ramdhun and other bhajans are sung regularly," says Pramod Ranjan Kumar, son of Abhimanyu.

Not many found it strange when P. Shankar Rao, a former Congress minister in Andhra Pradesh laid the foundation stone for the construction of a temple for Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in 2013. The temple, according to him, was in honour of the role which Gandhi played in bifurcating Andhra Pradesh and creating Telangana, the 29th state. The nine-ft tall bronze statue weighing around 500 kg will be unveiled on December 9, according to Rao. "The cost of the statue is borne by the residents of his former Shadnagar assembly constituency," says Rao.

Sachin Tendulkar is perhaps the only cricketer in the country to have a temple in his name. Built by Manoj Tiwari, a BJP MP from North-East Delhi, in 2013, the temple, a five-ft-four-inch marble idol, is located in Atarwalia, his ancestral village in Kaimur, Bihar. "The temple is my humble tribute to the great man and the player," says Tiwari.

Moving to Bollywood, fans of superstar Amitabh Bachchan have constructed a temple-like structure inside a residential flat belonging to one Sanjay Patodia in South Kolkata's Ballygung in 2003. The structure feature sandals worn by the actor in the film Agneepath. A pair of white leather shoes, covered in a glass case, is placed on an ornate dark-green chair procured from the sets of AKS, a supernatural thriller. It also includes a side portrait of the actor. On every Guru Purnima, a day dedicated for worshipping teachers and spiritual leaders, a priest offers prayer to his portrait.

Though a temple was originally planned for Big B by his fans association in Kolkata, the project never took off as S.P. Kamath, the then president of the association who mooted the idea got convicted in connection with a murder case. Kamath had announced that he would build a temple where people can worship "the angry young man" like any other Hindu God.

With inputs from Rakesh Dixit in Odisha, Amarnath Menon in Hyderabad and Soudhriti Bhabani in Kolkata