BJP to ride Advani’s temple talks

Buoyed by the ASI report on Ayodhya, the BJP is all set to bring the temple issue back to centrestage with the release here tomorrow of a bo...

Buoyed by the ASI report on Ayodhya, the BJP is all set to bring the temple issue back to centrestage with the release here tomorrow of a booklet which contains two articles by deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. ‘‘The booklet, Ayodhya Ka Gavai, is to be released tomorrow, and one of the two articles by the Deputy Prime Minister is a gist of the Ayodhya movement written when he was arrested and confined at a guest house during the rath yatra in 1990,’’ party spokesperson Prakash Javedkar said here today.

The book release will come just a couple of days after Advani said in Bangalore that the ASI report on Ayodhya excavations has vindicated the BJP’s point that the Ram temple had existed at ‘‘Ram janmasthan’’ and that it would strengthen the party’s position on the temple movement.

‘‘We never had any doubt that the Ram temple existed at Ram janmasthan. But now this has been proved scientifically by the ASI report,’’ Advani told the party’s office-bearers’ meeting. ‘‘It was not a government report. It was a report asked by the high court.”

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BJP sources said that along with the ASI report, Ayodhya will be among the issues which the party will focus on in the coming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi where the party is going it alone.

The BJP has planned a massive rally in Lucknow on October 6 to be addressed by BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu as part of its temple campaign that the sources said could deflect public attention from the collapse of its alliance with the BSP and help stem erosion in its upper caste votebank.

‘‘Our aim is to take Uttar Pradesh out of casteist and family politics,’’ Javedkar said.

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