Indicted by the Liberhan Commission as one of the key men responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, Kalyan Singh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh at the time, remained unrepentant on Tuesday, even claiming some brownie points for “preventing a massacre of kar sevaks” by not allowing the police to fire.
“Who and what should I have saved? Kar sevaks or the structure? I prevented a massacre. The structure went,” Mr. Singh said while repeating three times over that a “temple, temple, temple” would come up at the disputed site.
Mr. Singh, who has twice left the Bharatiya Janata Party since — once he was thrown out and the second time he left on his own — and has recently broken away from the Samajwadi Party, admitted that he did not allow the police to open fire on the crowd that had gathered. He described the Liberhan Commission report as “politically motivated” and born out of a “political conspiracy” to indict the top BJP leadership.
Recently, Mr. Singh expressed a willingness to once again come back to the BJP, but a senior party leader commented that the party was “not a ‘dharamshala’ [resting house]” where people come and go and take temporary shelter.
As for BJP president Rajnath Singh, he focussed more on the leaking of the report demanding that the government investigate the leak and present its finding to the Parliament before the end of the winter session.
Not a word came from party leaders on the indictment by the Liberhan Commission, only astonishment that Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name had been dragged into the issue by the Commission.
