At ground zero in Ayodhya, BJP prepares for 2019 Lok Sabha polls with Ram mandir politics?

The politics over Ram mandir is heating up before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The opposition parties allege that the BJP wants to raise the Ram mandir issue before elections.

Lucknow, Sep 14: The obsession of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, is not new. The saffron party's affiliates like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), to name a few, too are simply possessed with the idea of building the Hindu temple in the disputed site of Ayodhya.

That is why on a frequent basis, leaders of the BJP, the RSS and other Hindu organisations keep on reminding voters about building the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

As the saffron party is facing flak over its failure on demonetisation, economic slow growth, job loss, agricultural crisis, deaths due to mob lynching and insistence on nationalism and love for cow, to name a few current problems of the country, so it has decided to go back to its pet project--building the Ram temple at the disputed site of Ram Janmabhoomi in the temple town of Ayodhya.

According to a report by The Indian Express, although Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas (the organisation formed as a trust to promote and oversee the construction of the temple in Ayodhya) is stockpiling stone blocks and other building materials in Ayodhya to prepare for the construction of Ram temple, only one artisan is engaged in carving stones at the Nyas workshop.

Then, why is only one artisan carving stones, when the VHP has been constantly highlighting its effort to build the temple at the earliest? Reports say the VHP is planning to unveil a mini-design of the proposed Ram temple in Agra on Saturday.

If the VHP is so serious about building the temple at the earliest, does not it need to engage more workers to finish construction work? These are definitely some of the first questions even a child would ask seeing the huge gap between preparation and rhetoric of the Hindu organisations over building the Ram temple.

The opposition parties say the claim of the VHP and other Hindu groups to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya is merely a "gimmick" before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The real motive of the associates of the BJP, as per the opposition parties, is to polarise voters on the Hindu and Muslim lines before the elections.

The opposition parties allege that the BJP has failed to provide development in the country (an election slogan of Prime Minister Narendra Modi), so the saffron party is going back to temple politics.

"The BJP has no agenda of development. They only want to keep the Ram temple issue alive for political interests and divide society on religious lines. They are highlighting the arrival of stones in the media just to show off," Pawan Pandey, former Samajwadi Party MLA from Ayodhya and a minister in the previous Akhilesh Yadav government, told The Indian Express.

"The BJP has the Prime Minister elected from UP and has its chief minister in UP," Pandey said. "Why are they not passing a bill in Parliament for building a Ram temple? They only want to gain from lord Ram's name by bringing stones."

However, on Tuesday, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in a meeting with diplomats from over 50 countries in the national capital said that his organisation was bound by the Supreme Court verdict on the Ram temple and Babri temple case.

The final verdict on the Ayodhya case by the apex court is slated to take place on December 5, a day before the 25th anniversary of the Babri masjid demolition.

OneIndia News