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VHP to begin moving pillars from March 15
By J.P. Shukla
LUCKNOW, FEB. 10. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has announced that it will begin moving carved stones and pillars to the disputed site at Ayodhya from March 15 for the construction of the proposed Ram temple.
Talking to presspersons in Ayodhya today, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad working president, Ashok Singhal, and the Ram Janma Bhoomi Trust chairman, Paramhans Ramchandra Das, said the VHP was under severe pressure from the Hindu public opinion to go ahead with the construction programme. While the actual construction work would commence on any day after March 15, the movement of material would start on the very date.
The Hindu saints had given time to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to remove the obstacles in the temple construction till March 12. They were not ready to wait any more.
Rejecting the BJP president, Jana Krishnamurthy's suggestion that the Hindu leaders postpone the issue till 2004, Mr. Singhal said the VHP was not ready to accept any suggestion from the BJP in this regard.
He said there was no legal problem for the Government in taking the decision to hand over the 67 acres of acquired land around the disputed site to the VHP.
Sections 6 and 7 of the Ayodhya Land Acquisition Act 1993, made it clear that the Government was the trustee receiver of the acquired land with absolute right over it. Also, it had held that the Hindus had unfettered right of `darshan' at the make-shift temple. The VHP was, therefore, not ready to wait for the legal opinion being sought by the Centre in this regard .
If the Government wanted to sort out the problem through negotiations, it should hold talks with the Shias, which alone had a right of negotiations on the issue. The Sunnis had no locus standi in this regard.
In the meanwhile, a large number of Hindu sants would start converging at Ayodhya from February 24 to participate in the ``Ram nam jap purnahuti yagna''. The `yagna' would continue for the next several weeks.
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Centre unruffled
By Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, FEB. 10. The Vajpayee Government remains unruffled by the VHP announcement that the construction work at Ayodhya would begin on March 15. The inclination, for now, is not to engage the VHP leadership in any kind of verbal exchange; instead, the accent is on firm reiteration of the Government's known position that the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was bound by the NDA manifesto.
Mr. Vajpayee has already made it clear that the Government did not have the luxury of deviating either from the Supreme Court-decreed conditionalities on Ayodhya or from its obligations to ensure that law and order was maintained.
Government sources said the Centre was bound to ensure that the status quo remained unchanged in Ayodhya. The confrontation, if any, would be provoked by the `sants' and would be appropriately dealt with. At the same time, it is learnt that the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, is yet to send any kind of legal opinion on the possibility of the `sants' being given some portion of the undisputed land in Ayodhya.
Mr. Jaitley was asked by the Prime Minister, last month, to examine whether any legal lee-way was possible to accommodate the `sants' demand without running afoul of the judicial strictures.
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