Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday accused the Congress of stalling the decades-old Ayodhya land title case in the Supreme Court and “doing nothing” to resolve the Kashmir issue for 70 years in order to protect its vote bank.
Kick-starting the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) campaign for the upcoming Jharkhand elections, Shah said: “Everyone in the country wants the Ram temple to be built in Ayodhya. But the Congress party did not allow the case to proceed. Now, that the Supreme Court has decided by a majority verdict that a temple will be built at the Ram Janmabhoomi site, a grand temple that reaches the sky will be constructed there.”
On November 9, a five-member SC bench ruled unanimously in favour of Ram Lalla, the child deity, in the Ayodhya case and ordered that a separate plot of five acres be allotted to Muslim parties for construction of a mosque.
Rejecting Shah’s allegation, Jharkhand Congress spokesperson Alok Dubey said the BJP chief was trying to divert attention from the real issues of the state in order to hide the Raghubar Das-led state government’s shortcomings.
“The allegations are part of diversionary tactics of the BJP. The fact remains that the Ayodhya verdict has come from the Supreme Court and no one is allowed to play politics over it. The BJP should instead debate over real issues plaguing the state which includes tribal rights, hunger deaths, job loss and failure of the government in tackling Maoists,” he said.
Addressing an election meeting in the state’s Manika area, Shah said that unlike the previous Congress governments, the BJP-led central government has taken concrete steps for development of Kashmir. “The Congress party left the Kashmir problem hanging fire for 70 years in its greed to protect its vote bank. Modiji (PM Narendra Modi) has erased the blot of Article 370 from the crown jewel of Bharat Mata and paved the way for Kashmir’s development,” he said.
The government on August 5 nullified Article 370 of the Constitution that gave a special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the region into Union Territories of Ladakh and J&K.
The BJP looks set to contest the Jharkhand elections on its own for the first time as it has declared candidates for 79 of the state’s 81 seats. The party, however, has kept the option of a post-poll alliance with the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) Party open by not fielding anyone from Silli, the seat from where AJSU chief Sudesh Mahto is in the fray, political observers said.
BJP leaders have remained tight-lipped on the issue of alliance in the state.
