Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani on Friday re-opened the Ayodhya issue and said people in the country would be “happy and satisfied” only when a decent temple came up at Lord Ram’s birthplace.
He was talking to journalists at Somnath after his annual visit to the temple there. Mr. Advani has been visiting the Somnath temple on September 25 every year since 1990 when he launched the historic Ram Janmabhoomi rath yatra. That day, he believed, changed the course of the BJP.
Mr. Advani said he wished that the present government at the Centre adopted the same attitude to the Ram temple issue, as did the Delhi government to the Somnath temple soon after Independence. The Delhi government allowed reconstruction at the same spot where the old temple plundered by Muslim invaders existed.
Later he inaugurated here a Gujarat government scheme for supply of “fortified flour” under the mid-day meal scheme for schoolchildren.
Meanwhile, another visitor to the city, the former BJP leader K.N. Govindacharya, said Mr Advani’s retirement from active politics was “long overdue.”
Way back in 2005 when the BJP was celebrating the silver jubilee, he suggested to Mr. Advani that he make a “graceful exit” from public life as did the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He also suggested to Mr. Advani that the BJP be disbanded or handed over to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for a revamp.
