Kalyan Singh says Ram temple issue still alive

Lucknow, Dec 23 (UNI) Refusing to admit that the Ram temple issue has lost favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party, senior party leader and incharge of Uttar Pradesh affairs Kalyan Singh today said the party was still committed to it.

The Ayodhya issue may not have been discussed at the Bharatiya Janata Party's National Executive but it was inscribed on the minds of the people and would definitely be an issue in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Mr Singh said just before the National Council meet.

''People themselves would make Ayodhya an issue as it represents a sense of pride and nationalist mindset of millions of Indians,'' he said.

Also declining to accept that the party always came back to the 'Hindu card' whenever some important elections were lined up, the senior BJP leader said the blatant Muslim appeasement by the UPA government at the Centre and Mulayam Singh Yadav government in UP prompted the party to do so.

He said the BJP had always catered to all classes of society but the the Congress and Samajwadi Party indulged in cheap vote-based politics by creating division among the communities.

Mr Singh, the BJP's projected chief minister in UP, said appeasement policy would play the most important role during the coming assembly polls in the state.

Lambasting the Mulayam government in UP for its failure to maintain law and order in the state, he said, ''People are looking to the BJP as an alternative to SP misrule.'' ''BJP during its earlier regimes has provided a clean and just administration,'' he claimed.

Meanwhile BJP general secretary and former UP state president Vinay Katiyar also supported the views of Mr Singh saying that Ayodhya issue cannot be sidelined even if it was not in the agenda of the conclave.

The firebrand leader said the BJP was comitted to constructing 'a grand' Ram temple at Ayodhya at any cost.

Coming down heavily on UPA government, he said it was a dismal failure on its part to ensure security in the country. ''If Mrs Sonia Gandhi is not safe and is on the target of terrorist groups, it proves the failure of the UPA to tackle terrorism in the country,'' he added.

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