Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Goel on Tuesday defaced the Babar Road road sign in the national Capital, ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, The Indian Express reported. He demanded that the Centre name the road “5 August Marg”.
Goel wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, asking that the road be renamed. “Babar was an invader who attacked Hindustan and demolished Ram mandir,” Goel said. “The PM [Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to perform a groundbreaking ceremony for a grand temple in Ayodhya tomorrow. At such a time, it will be an appropriate move to rename Babar Road as 5 August Marg.”
Goel, a former Delhi BJP president, went to the area in Lutyens’ Delhi with some of his supporters, and pasted a black cross over the name “Babar Road” on the signboard. He also made sure the name was replaced with “5 August Road”. The BJP leader said that he would also begin to write “5 August Road” on his letterhead from now on.
Last year, the Hindu Sena fringe group had blackened the Babar Road signboard in New Delhi’s Bengali Market.
“We got to know that some group had pasted a sticker on Babar Road board, but we have removed it now,” NDMC Senior Engineer (Roads) TM Meena said.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat and Iqbal Ansari, a litigant in the Ayodhya case, are among the main invitees to the ground-breaking ceremony. Over 50 VIPs will attend the ceremony.
Hindu extremists demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, alleging that it had been built on sacred land where a temple once stood. The incident had triggered riots around the country in which around 2,000 people were killed.
In a landmark verdict on November 9 last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that the disputed land in Ayodhya would be handed over to a government-run trust for the construction of a Ram temple. The court also said that the demolition of Babri Masjid was illegal, but directed the government to acquire another plot of land to build a mosque.
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