Expressing their confidence that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh will make sure that the Ram temple is constructed in Ayodhya, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has started collecting stones at its headquarters in the city, PTI reported on Tuesday. The fringe group said the temple’s construction will begin within a year, irrespective of the Supreme Court verdict that is awaited in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi case.
Senior VHP leader Triloki Nath Pandey told the news agency that two truckloads of stones meant for construction at the disputed Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya had already arrived from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur. “We need more than 100 truckloads of stones to give final shape to the proposed Ram Temple,” he said. “Now there is a BJP government in the state. So there will not be any hurdles in the way of the construction of the Ram Temple.”
A similar attempt to collect stones from all over the country for the temple was foiled by the Samajwadi Party government in UP in 2015, PTI reported. The previous Akhilesh Yadav government had banned the import of stones in the state by denying them Form 39 of the commercial tax department – a form required for import in Uttar Pradesh. However, Pandey said that a month ago, an official from the commercial tax department had provided them with the required form.
On December 6, 1992, the mosque was demolished by lakhs of karsevaks, who had gathered at the site. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country. The karsevaks had claimed that the land on which the mosque stood was the birthplace of Ram. In May this year, a CBI court had framed conspiracy charges against senior BJP leaders including LK Advani, Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi in the case.
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