
New Delhi: The two leading opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), are yet to comment on the Babri Masjid demolition verdict in which all the 32 accused, including senior BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, were acquitted Wednesday.
SP chief and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has not reacted to the verdict on social media or otherwise. He only tweeted about the Hathras gang rape and murder case.
His party also issued a press statement Wednesday evening, expressing outrage over the rape, but nothing on the Babri verdict.
ThePrint contacted SP spokesperson Anurag Bhadauria, but he refused to comment on the Babri verdict, saying he will get back after confirming the party’s stand on it. He didn’t revert until the time of publishing this report.
Mayawati, former chief minister and BSP supremo, has also chosen to stay mum on the verdict. She too has only tweeted about the Hathras case since Wednesday.
Speaking to ThePrint, BSP leader Sudhindra Bhadoria said: “All court orders must be respected.
“How can one question a court order? We have to respect everything that the judiciary says,” Bhadoria said. However, he added that he is “speaking in an individual capacity as the party has not taken an official position yet”.
A special CBI court in Lucknow acquitted all the 32 accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case, including Advani, Joshi, former UP CM Kalyan Singh, and BJP leaders Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar and Sakshi Maharaj.
Both the SP and BSP had welcomed the November 2019 Supreme Court verdict on the Ayodhya title dispute case, which paved the way for the construction of a Ram Temple.
While Yadav had called the verdict “historic”, Mayawati had appealed to everyone to “respect the verdict”.
Special court runs counter to SC decision: Congress
The Congress, meanwhile, released an official statement Wednesday, hours after the verdict, saying it “runs counter to Supreme Court judgement as also the Constitutional spirit”. The Supreme Court in its November verdict had called the demolition “illegal”.
“It is clear that the decision of the special court runs counter to the decision of the Supreme Court of India. Entire country witnessed a deep-rooted political conspiracy by BJP-RSS and its leaders to destroy the country’s communal amity and brotherhood for usurping power at any cost. The then BJP government of Uttar Pradesh was a co-conspirator in the designed attack on India’s constitutional ethos,” said chief Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Surjewala further said the party urges the Central and state governments to file an appeal against the decision of the special court.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, however, did not put out a statement on the issue, nor have leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi so far.
Rahul and Priyanka Thursday headed to Hathras to visit the family of the rape victim.
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