The BJP on Monday said that the Congress party was trying everything to delay an early verdict on the Ram Janmabhoomi case, accusing the party of trying to build a momentum against the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Party spokesperson G.V.L. Narasimha Rao was responding to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s statement at The Hindu’s Lit For Life Dialogue in Chennai, where he had said, “No good Hindu” would have wanted to see the Ram Temple built by demolishing someone else’s place of worship — a reference to the razing of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
‘Vote bank politics’
Mr. Rao said the Congress had put various impediments in the way of an early legal resolution to the case, and that Mr. Tharoor was just the latest to join the bandwagon.
The BJP “wants a grand Ram temple and will wait for the court’s verdict,” Mr. Rao said, asking Congress president Rahul Gandhi to clear his stand.
“You (Congress) are conspiring to ensure that there is no verdict from the court,” he said.
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The Congress was doing “vote bank politics”, he said, alleging that Mr. Gandhi had earlier claimed that his party was a “Muslims’ party”.
Mr. Rao said while Mr. Gandhi wore his Shiv bhakti (devotion to Lord Shiv) on his sleeve, he should answer whether he was a Hindu.
In Chennai, in a conversation with former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi as part of The Hindu Lit for Life event, Mr. Tharoor had said that as a Hindu he was very conscious that a vast majority of his fellow Hindus believed that this (the site in Ayodhya) was the specific birth place of Lord Ram.
Demolition anathema
“And for that reason most good Hindus would want to see a Ram temple at the site where Ram was supposed to be born. But I also believe that no good Hindu would have wanted to see that temple built by demolishing somebody else’s place of worship,” Mr. Tharoor said.
Mr. Rao also accused the Congress of following a double-pronged strategy of showing its love for Pakistan and and “working to break India” as part of Mr. Gandhi’s “divisive mindset”.
‘Sack Sidhu’
He cited Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu’s reported comments that he could relate to Pakistan more than south India to hit out at the Opposition party. He demanded that Mr. Sidhu be sacked as a Minister in the Punjab government within a week or the BJP would carry out protests.
Mr Sidhu’s remarks were also a reflection on the Opposition party’s and its ruling Gandhi family’s “hatred for south India”, Mr. Rao alleged as he cited its “ill-treatment” of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in an apparent nod to the upcoming Assembly poll in Telangana.