‘Lalu has told Babri half truth’

KS Sudarshan, former chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in an article in a local Nagpur daily, wrote that Lalu Prasad Yadav has disclosed only half the story. Pradip Kumar Maitra reports.

There is a new player in the Lalu Prasad-Congress blame game over Babri demolition: KS Sudarshan, the 78-year-old former chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In an article in a local Nagpur daily, Sudarshan wrote that Prasad (61) has disclosed only half the story.

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“Different news channels carried your statement that the first party responsible for the demolition of Babri Masjid was Advani and the second - the Congress. You did not fail to threaten that if the Congress does not stop its bakbak (banter), you will reveal still further,” wrote Sudarshan.

Sudarshan goes on to claim that “the then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao actually wanted the structure to be demolished.”

Rajju Bhaiyya, then RSS general secretary, met Rao time and again and requested him to approach the Supreme Court for an early verdict as the Kar Sevaks who had gathered in Ayodhya were getting increasingly disgruntled.

“But Rao did nothing. He actually wanted the structure to be demolished,” the former RSS chief alleged. Sudarshan, who was the organisation’s joint general secretary, said that it was a journalist, close to Rao, who told the PM that the mosque structure was completely demolished. At that, “Narasimha Rao exclaimed, ‘Oh! I have been deceived. I shall get the mosque constructed. I shall clear my stand in a press briefing on December 10.’” On December 10, Rao banned the RSS.