Author: PTI
Publication: The Hindu
Date: May 1, 2001
Union Human Resource Minister Murli
Manohar Joshi today said V P Singh, during his prime ministership, miserably
failed on the Ayodhya front despite his promise to solve the problem within
four months.
``Instead of solving the problem,
he sometimes formed a committee of ministers, offered certain solutions,
changed them and withdrew them,'' Joshi told the Liberhan Commission probing
the sequence of events leading to demolition of the disputed structure
at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
The Minister criticised the V P
Singh Government for going back on the issue handing over about 2.7 acre
of undisputed land to a trust and for mentioning only the issue of disputed
site to the Supreme Court.
Senior BJP leader L K Advani had
requested him for an early solution to the problem and was all the time
available for reacting and responding to the offers made by the government
``but he (Singh) failed miserably'', Joshi said.
He said the BJP always wanted an
amicable solution and the ``attitude of Advani was always to respond constructively
to the suggestions made by V P Singh government through his ministers and
other emissaries, he said.
The Minister said the crux of the
matter was that the undisputed land be taken over through an order and
handed over to a trust with a neutral receiver, he said.
The Government was to acquire the
rest of the disputed structure as well as 30 feet land around it, Joshi
said.
The 2.77 acres of land was to be
separated from the disputed site and whenever the dispute regarding the
structure would be settled, the construction of temple would take place.
But in the meantime the land could be handed over to a trust, he said.
Further the Government was supposed
to approach the Supreme Court under Article 143 to determine if a Hindu
temple pre-existed at the disputed site.
The Minister said that after the
decision, an additional secretary in the PMO was called around mid-night
and asked to initiate steps to implement the proposal.
But in the meantime, Advani, who
was on his rathyatra from Somnath to Ayodhya, was arrested in Bihar on
October 21, 1990 and the matter ended there, he said.
Joshi came down heavily on the then
chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Mulayam Singh Yadav for ``playing vote
bank politics and not attending to the basic issues''.
