Libgdx implement 2d drop shadow for transparent sprites

I am a libgdx learner. For an learning application that I am developing using libgdx on android, I need to show drop shadow or glow effect when a sprite is touched. The sprites are created from a TextureAtlas and can have any irregular shape as per the transparent image in the texture. There are a ton of images so it is not possible to create a separate shadow image for each one.

I have looked at some options but haven’t been able to figure out how to do it. What I have tried include:

1. OpenGL ES drop shadows for 2D sprites

2. I tried the approach of taking the texture and bluring it using the blurutils class provided by Matt Deslauriers at https://github.com/mattdesl/lwjgl-basics/wiki/OpenGL-ES-Blurs. The code I have used is below. But the performance was very slow on android devices for the BlurUitls.blur call.

   private Sprite getShadowSprite(String name,float width,float height) {
   //Load the texture
   Pixmap orig = new Pixmap(Gdx.files.internal(name));
   
   //blur it
   Pixmap blurred = BlurUtils.blur(orig, 16, 2, true);
   
   //we then create a GL texture with the blurred pixmap
   Texture blurTex = new Texture(blurred);
   Sprite shadow=new Sprite(blurTex);
   shadow.setSize(width,height);
   shadow.flip(false,true);
   
   //dispose our blurred data now that it resides on the GPU
   blurred.dispose();
   return shadow;
   }
   

I do not have much of an understanding of shaders. Please advise as to what is the most performant way to be able to generate a drop shadow for a transparent image in libgdx.