BJP to meet at Ayodhya, send out Hindutva signal

Party lets voters know it is committed to Ram temple

In an apparent bid to send an ‘unambiguous message’ to its vote bank that it had not deviated from its commitment to Ram temple, the Uttar Pradesh BJP will hold its regional meet at Ayodhya.

The meeting assumes significance as the newly appointed state Bharatiya Janata Party in-charge and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s protege Amit Shah will also participate in it.

“Such a meeting is being held at Ayodhya after a long gap. It will certainly send across a message not only to our cadre, but also to our supporters that the party is fully committed to the construction of a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya,” said a senior state BJP leader here.

The meeting is being held just a few days after the five-day-long ‘Amrit Mahotsav’ was organised by the Ram Janambhoomi Trust chairman and a well-known Hindu cleric Mahant Nritya Gopal Das.

A number of senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders and saints from across the country who attended the function had rooted for Modi in their speeches and advocated for returning to ‘hard core Hindutva’.

Modi too was expected to attend the event but his programme was cancelled at the eleventh hour to avoid any controversy.

Incidentally, the Bharatiya Janata Party had lost the Ayodhya assembly seat to the Samajwadi Party in the last year’s polls.

The defeat in Ayodhya had shocked the state’s saffron leaders.

A section of the BJP feels the meeting could once again revive the movement, at least in Ayodhya and the nearby districts.

Shah had already indicated that the BJP will take up issues like Ram temple, cow slaughter and appeasement of the Muslim community forcefully to expose the present dispensation in the state.

UP, which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha, will be crucial for Modi if he nurtures a prime ministerial ambition. BJP could win only nine seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls while in the last year’s assembly elections its tally was merely 47.