A poster showing Congress President Rahul Gandhi as Hindu deity Ram was seen on the streets of Patna on Tuesday, days ahead of his visit to the state for the Jan Aakanksha rally. Gandhi is scheduled to address the rally in the Bihar capital on February 3.
Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party, the poster reads: “Let them keep chanting the name of Ram, you be Ram himself.” Others seen on the poster are Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Manmohan Singh and state Congress leaders.
The poster was put up by Congress worker Vijay Kumar Singh. “Rahul ji has all the qualities of Lord Ram and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is only doing politics in the name of Lord Ram,” Singh told The Times of India. “Congress has been working for the development of the country for long and all the important revolutions and schemes had been implemented by the Congress.”
Singh said only the Congress and Gandhi were capable of resolving the Ayodhya matter.
As many as 14 separate petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict ordering a three-way division of the land on which the Babri Masjid stood. The land was divided equally between the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Wakf Board and the representative for the deity Ram Lalla in the 2010 judgement. A Constitution bench comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, and Justices Ashok Bhushan, Abdul Nazeer, SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud is scheduled to hear the matter.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Centre moved the top court seeking its permission to return all excess acquired land at the site to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. In a judgement in 2003, the court had barred religious activity of any kind on 67.703 acres of land located in revenue plot numbers 159 and 160 in the village of Kot Ramchandra that is “vested in the central government”.
The government has filed an interlocutory application seeking modification of the court judgement to restore the surplus land, which is not part of the dispute, to the trust, which was formed to promote and oversee the construction of a Ram temple.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra on Tuesday asked Congress to clarify its stand on the Centre’s petition. On Twitter, Patra shared the image of the poster showing Gandhi as Ram, saying the sole intention of the Congress is that “sycophancy is the supreme motto”.
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