Amit Shah announces Ram Mandir to be ready by Jan 1 next year ahead of LS elections
Sabroom (Tripura), Jan 5: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday announced the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya will be ready by January 1, 2024, the year the Lok Sabha elections will be held.
This is being seen as an indication that Ram Mandir, a plank raked up by the saffron camp since 1990 when BJP leader L K Advani started out on a Rath Yatra to focus on the issue, may again be one of the cornerstones of BJP's campaign in the next general election.
"Rahul baba, listen from Sabroom that a mammoth Ram Mandir will be ready on January 1, 2024," he said attacking Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who is in the midst of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a 3500 kilometres long march from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.
Secretary of Ram Mandir Trust Champat Rai and chief priest of Ram Janmabhoomi temple Acharya Satyendra Das had come out with separate statements appreciating Gandhi for the Bharat Jodo Yatra earlier this week.
Advani's Rath Yatra was believed a major factor in the rise of the BJP in the 1990s which had been politically hit by both the advent of Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and the Mandal Commission award in the late 1980s which saw regional parties espousing the cause of OBCs gaining strength.
The Rath Yatra also saw the spawning of a movement calling for the destruction of the 16th-century Mosque in Ayodhya, which some believed was the site of a palace where Lord Ram was born. It culminated in the public destruction of the mosque by saffron brigade volunteers in December 1992.
Addressing a public rally at Sabroom in Tripura, where assembly polls are due early this year, Shah said that the Congress and Communists had put the Ram Mandir issue in the jurisdiction of the court for long, whereas Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for it after the Supreme Court's order permitting construction.
The Congress and the CPI(M) are the main opposition parties in the BJP-ruled northeastern state and there are indications that the two will fight the assembly election together.
After decades-long legal battle, the Supreme Court on November 9, 2019, paved the way for the construction of the Ram temple in the disputed site at Ayodhya, where Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992.
The prime minister performed the "Bhoomi puja" for the construction of the temple on August 5, 2020.
At Sabroom in South Tripura district, Shah flagged off a BJP rath yatra, the second one during the day after Dharmanagar in North Tripura district, aimed at highlighting the state government's achievements.
The country is safe in the hands of Modi, the union minister said.
"Ten days after the Pulwama incident in Kashmir, Indian soldiers went inside Pakistan and carried out a successful operation under Modi's leadership," he pointed out.
A CRPF convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber in Pulwama district killing 40 personnel on February 14, 2019. The Indian Air Force raided a terrorist camp at Balakot in Pakistan on February 26.
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Modi govt 'snatching away' reservation by 'blindly' implementing privatisation: Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused the Modi government of "clandestinely snatching away" reservation from Dalits, tribals and backward classes by "blindly" implementing privatisation, and said his party guarantees strengthening the public sector enterprises and open the doors for employment.
In a post in Hindi on X, Gandhi said the mantra of Narendra Modi's campaign to remove reservation is -- 'na rahega baans, na bajegi bansuri', meaning neither there will be government jobs nor any reservation will be available.
"The BJP government is clandestinely snatching away reservation from Dalits, tribals and backward classes by eliminating government jobs through 'blind privatisation'," the former Congress chief said.
In 2013, there were 14 lakh permanent posts in the public sector, which by 2023 stood at 8.4 lakh, he said.
"By ruining top PSU's like BSNL, SAIL, BHEL etc., nearly 6 lakh permanent jobs were eliminated from the public sector alone -- these are the very posts which would have given the benefit of reservation," Gandhi said.
There is no count of the jobs that are being eliminated through the back door in institutions such as railways by giving government work on contract, he claimed.
"The 'privatisation' of the Modi model is a plunder of the country's resources, through which the reservation of the deprived is being snatched away," he alleged.
The Congress guarantees that it will strengthen the public sector enterprises and open the doors for employment for every section of the society by filling 30 lakh vacant government posts, Gandhi said.
