Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kmar (File)

After BJP’s Nawada MP and Union minister Giriraj Singh said “people’s patience is running out” due to the delay in a Supreme Court decision on the Ram temple matter, several other senior BJP leaders in Bihar have rallied around the demand for temple’s construction. BJP’s ally JD (U), however, has said the temple might be a BJP agenda but it is not an NDA agenda. JD (U) has stuck to its earlier stand on abiding by any solution provided by the court.

Senior BJP ministers in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, Road Construction Minister Nand Kishore Yadav and Health Minister Mangal Pandey, on Wednesday attended a function called “Ek diya Ram mandir ke naam (one lamp in the name of Ram temple)” at the Hanuman temple, Rajbanshi Nagar, Patna.

Also, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi tweeted two days ago, “In the 1990s, the Congress government had submitted an affidavit in SC, saying that if excavatory evidence of the existence of a temple were found, the government would support the temple’s construction. Now that excavation ordered by Allahabad HE has revealed relics of a temple, the Congress should offer to support the current Central government…”

JD(U) spokesperson and secretary general K C Tyagi told The Indian Express, “When negotiation between religious heads of the two communities failed, the matter reached the court. We will abide by any decision or solution offered by the court. We cannot accept any other solution. Temple construction well be a BJP agenda, it is not an NDA agenda.”