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New Delhi. Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said that the Congress party, not former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was responsible for opening the lock of the gate of the disputed structure in Ayodhya in 1986. He said that BJP had ‘planted’ Arun Nehru who was behind it. Iyer was speaking at the launch of his book ‘The Rajiv I Knew and Why He Was India’s Most Misunderstood Prime Minister’.
He said that if Rajiv Gandhi had been alive and had been the Prime Minister in place of PV Narasimha Rao, the disputed structure would have still been standing, the BJP would have been given a proper reply and they would have found a solution similar to what the Supreme Court found years later. Iyer said, ‘He (Rajiv Gandhi) was saying maintain the mosque and build the temple. The Supreme Court said that the temple should be built and the mosque should be built somewhere else. In a way, the decision is the same conclusion that Rajiv was reaching. Aiyar also praised the Congress leadership’s decision to reject the invitation for the consecration ceremony of Ram Lal’s idol on January 22.
Pointing out that Arun Nehru was behind the opening of the lock, Iyer said that since former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had studied in a school in Lucknow, the issue of Ram Janmabhoomi was on his mind. So he used his power within the party to get an unknown person, Veer Bahadur Singh, elected as Chief Minister. Singh first went to Ayodhya and met Devki Nandan Aggarwal (former judge of Allahabad High Court) and others. He obtained a petition from them according to which the locks were imposed not by judicial order but by executive order. After this, on February 1, 1986, when the matter came before the District and Sessions Judge of Faizabad, the District Magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police confirmed that locks were not necessary to maintain peace and law and order.
The locks were opened and a large number of Hindu devotees, who had been deliberately gathered, entered. Rajiv Gandhi did not know anything about this. Congress had a hand in opening the locks, but that Congressman knew that Rajiv Gandhi would never allow the locks to be opened by canceling the executive order, that is why he kept Rajiv away from it. Iyer said the end of the story is that Arun Nehru joined the BJP and he was ‘planted’ by the BJP.
Courtesy: Dainik Jagran
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