Shirdi Sai Baba’s devotees of Rourkela, the Steel City of Orissa, were worshipping Baba in their houses since long. But when Gurujee, Sri Chandrabhanu Satpathy, came to Rourkela for the first time in 1990 in a marriage party (like Saibaba visited Shirdi) many devotees met him and put forth the idea of having a Temple of Baba at Rourkela. Gurujee advised them to perform Aarati in groups in common places – this went on for many years. Then in 1999, he telephonically addressed a group of devotees who had assembled at Basanti Pathagar and was pleased to know that the momentum was gaining speed. However, he still did not encourage them to build a temple - he was probably testing the patience of the devotees. He came to the Steel City again in 2001 and was pleased to see that thousands of devotees had gathered to meet him. He finally gave the green signal for a temple in Rourkela.
Some of the devotees started searching for land. It was a difficult task as Gurujee never encouraged building of temples on unauthorized Govt. land or on land with any litigation issues associated. The devotees scoured the entire city and approached all the high officials like M.D. Rourkela Steel Plant, Collector, R.D.C. Sambalpur, Member of Parliament and so on but nothing worked. Finally two devotees donated about half an acre of land. It was formally registered in the name of the Trust and Gurujee was pleased to allow the devotees to go ahead with the Temple project.