Date:01/07/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/07/01/stories/2009070155731000.htm

National

Temple issue back on centre stage: BJP

Neena Vyas

Denies charge that delay in report was due to non-cooperation by party leaders

Sentiments of crores of Hindus are attached to the issue: BJP
I will be able to comment only when the details of Liberhan report are available: Rajnath

NEW DELHI: Wittingly or unwittingly, the submission of the Liberhan Commission report on the circumstances leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 has brought the Ram temple issue “back on centre stage of national politics.” This is what the Bharatiya Janata Party believes, although at the moment, it is not sure “how the issue will play out.”

Party leaders were cautious while making two points — there had been an inordinate delay in finalising and submitting the report and since the contents were not yet known they would be able to make any comments only after the report was made public.

BJP president Rajnath Singh said: “It was a sensitive subject. There has been a very long delay in finalising the report. I will be able to comment only when the details of the report are available.”

About the time that Justice Liberhan was submitting the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani was holding a meeting at his residence with the party’s parliamentary wing office-bearers — Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Ramesh Bains, S.S. Ahluwalia, among others. Apparently, this was not discussed much. “You don’t expect us to discuss how and why the structure was demolished,” one leader said, while adding: “We are already bruised and hurting [from the electoral defeat and our own quarrels]. A Liberhan Commission report at this juncture can hardly hurt us more.”

Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “We will make a formal comment after the content of the report becomes known. It was wrong for the Congress to suggest that the delay was because of non-cooperation with the Commission by BJP leaders. Mr. Advani as Deputy Prime Minister had appeared over a whole week before the Commission and he was examined and cross-examined. I object to the suggestion by the Congress that we brought the structure down and chanted ek dhakka aur do [give it one more push to bring it down].”

Mr. Prasad said “sentiments of crores of Hindus” were “attached to the issue and they want a bhavya mandir [grand temple] at the [disputed] site in Ayodhya” where the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished.

The party also said it expected “and so did the people of the country” that the report be tabled in Parliament and made public.

Some BJP leaders said it would be “counter-productive” for the government “to victimise” BJP leaders named in the two separate criminal cases related to the demolition as “they were already being prosecuted.” One senior leader said: “If the government pushed ahead [on the basis of the report] with a vengeance, if the Congress tries to make political capital of the report, it will have its own political consequences.”

Asked whether leaders should not be prosecuted under the law for fear of political fallout, they did not respond.

A party leader countered: “What if the report indicts the then Central government led by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao? What if it strongly indicts Kalyan Singh, a tall BJP leader who was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister at the time and who is now virtually aligned with the Samajwadi Party?”