Jharkhand Assembly Elections 2019| ‘Congress could have resolved Ayodhya too’: PM Modi pans Oppn in Jharkhand

The Congress could have resolved the Ayodhya land title dispute a long time back but did not because it was worried about its vote bank, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a public meeting in Jharkhand’s Daltonganj on Monday.

“This mindset of the Congress has hurt the country,” PM Modi said, underscoring that the dispute which had festered for decades had created divisions and built walls between communities in the country and society. PM Modi contrasted this approach with the one adopted by his government that he said, had been resolving long-pending problems.

PM Modi’s attack on the Congress mirrors a similar offensive launched by Home Minister Amit Shah over Ayodhya at an election meeting last week, not far from the venue of the prime minister’s rally last week. Amit Shah had then accused the Congress of attempting to stall proceedings in the Supreme Court in this case.

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PM Modi, who also spoke about the many schemes started by his government, said the Congress had deliberately kept the Ayodhya dispute over Lord Ram’s birthplace hanging fire for decades.

“If the Congress wanted, it could have found a resolution to the dispute but it did not because the Congress was worried about its vote bank,” he said. The prime minister did not elaborate.

On November 9, a five-member SC bench ruled unanimously in favour of Ram Lalla, the child deity, in the Ayodhya case and ordered that a separate plot of five acres be allotted to Muslim parties for construction of a mosque.

The Bharatiya Janata Party promised the country that this issue would be resolved as soon as possible and delivered on this promise, he said.

PM Modi also promised that the BJP governments at the Centre and the state would continue to protect Jharkhand’s ‘jal’, jungle and ‘zameen’ (water, forest and land).

“The BJP governments at the Centre and the state will continue to protect Jharkhand’s ‘jal’, jungle and ‘zameen’ (water, forest and land), no matter what the opposition says. The state has made efforts to curb naxalism in the state and will continue to fight against the menace,” he said.

The BJP is contest the Jharkhand elections on its own for the first time as it has declared candidates for 79 of the state’s 81 seats. The party, however, has kept the option of a post-poll alliance with the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) Party open by not fielding anyone from Silli, the seat from where AJSU chief Sudesh Mahto is in the fray, political observers said.