Cong goes soft on Atal, hangs Rao out to dry

?His name, like that of Deoraha Baba, figures in a list (of 68 indicted people). Is list ko pare rakh dijiye (put this list aside),? Union minister for minority affairs Salman Khursheed said in the Lok Sabha while participating in the discussion on the Liberhan Commission Report.

The ruling party?s voluntary gesture of reconciliation came following scathing criticism of the commission?s report by senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh who pointed out that Vajpayee was indicted even though he had never been called by the Commission.

Similarly, Deoraha Baba, who had died over two years before the demolition, had been indicted, said Singh pointing out that former President Rajendra Prasad and former Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi all used to call on the saint.

Before the shilanyas in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi had gone to meet Deoraha Baba, said the BJP president.

?Liberhan has not said that Vajpayee was a part of the conspiracy. It only said that top leaders (of the BJP) would know about crores of rupees being collected… It (the list of 68 people) does not say how he is culpable. If something has come by mistake, both of us (BJP and Congress) are saying the same thing,? said Khursheed.

Jagdambika Pal, who initiated the debate from the treasury benches, sought to defend then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao saying that if senior BJP leaders claimed not to have known about the plan to demolish the disputed structure, how could Rao know about this? Khursheed, however, made a nuanced shift in the party?s stance saying that ?history will decide it (Rao?s role).?

In an indirect reference to the post-1992 phase when the Congress was being blamed for its failure to protect the mosque, Khursheed said that the Congress had also received a blow and leaders were jittery. ?But, fortunately, Soniaji decided to become the president of the party,? he said.

Participating in the debate over the Liberhan Commission report, the BJP on Monday tried to put the Congress in the dock, terming the report as a ?political document? while it took care to underline its Hindutva path by expressing its commitment to build a Ram temple at the same site for ?national justice.?

BJP president Rajnath Singh questioned the credibility of the report and said that it was ?a bundle of grave errors?. He took strong exception to the inclusion of names of senior leaders Vajpayee, LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi and said that the demolition was a result of public anger. The BJP chief defended then UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh.

?Inquiries are done on inductive logic. But the Liberhan report has adopted deductive logic. The conclusion was designed first and then the facts were arranged to reach the desired conclusion. It is a political document for character assassination,? he said.

Singh?s target was the Congress as he deftly avoided taking on Opposition parties Samajwadi Party, Left and ally JD(U). ?Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said the structure would not have been demolished had anybody from the Gandhi family been in power. I want to know when the locks were opened and when was the shilanyas performed,? he said, in a reference to Rajiv Gandhi.

As Singh claimed that puja was being offered at the site and namaz was never performed, there was an uproar with many Congress and other members charging the BJP leader with misleading the House. Home Minister P Chidambaram then intervened and said the issue of namaz or puja could not be discussed in Parliament as the matter was sub judice.

Participating in the debate, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav targeted both BJP and the Congress. He said that the Liberhan report lacked understanding and hid facts. ?The mosque was demolished through a collusion between the BJP and the Congress. The Congress cannot wash its hands of it,? he said.

Mulayam?s attack against the Congress was more scathing than against the BJP. He said that the faulty policies of the Congress were responsible for ?whatever difficulties the country was facing.? But he justified Vajpayee being indicted and said that he too was part of the movement.

JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav also slammed the Congress. ?The Rao government was ready with a legislation to declare Ayodhya a Central territory but it was never brought in?, he alleged.