Author:
Publication: Hindustan Times, New
Delhi
Date: May 16, 2001
Home Minister L K Advani today
said that Narasimha Rao government's refusal' to request the Allahabad
High Court to give an early verdict on land acquisition case was a 'signal'
to delay the judgements which resulted in public anger leading to demolition
of the disputed structure.
Deposing before the Liberhan Ayodhya
Commission of Inquiry, he said he did not think the analysis that the Centre's
signals to the Allahabad HC to delay the judgement "is factually wrong".
He said, Throughout the month of
November 1992 from our side we had been making direct approaches to the
High Court for an early verdict as the arguments have been complete for
over a month.
"Vajpayee and I met the Prime Minister
(P V Narasimha Rao) and we urged him to request the High Court to give
an early verdict. After all, it was entirely up to the High Court to time
its verdict," he said.
Advani added, "The government, like
any other authority, could request it. When it is publicly known that the
government has conveyed to Vajpayee, Advani and others that the government
is not going to make even a request for an early verdict what is the message
conveyed to the judiciary, except what I said in the statement."
Advani blamed the Centre for not
taking any step to urge the HC to deliver an early judgement and added,
"If the High Court had pronounced its verdict on its own before December
6 in response to our requests, the demolition wouldn't have occurred.'
The Home Minister, recalling what
RSS leader Prof. Rajendra Singh told him, said Singh met Rao on December
3 and "urged him again to request the Allahabad High Court for an early
verdict" as "RSS itself had certain doubts whether they would be able to
keep all these lakhs (of karsevaks) under control".
Singh told Rao that if the judgement
was delivered, irrespective of whether it upheld or rejected the Uttar
Pradesh Government's notification acquiring 2.77 acres of land adjacent
to the disputed structure, it would help diffuse the situation.
When Singh told the then PM that
he feared that there would be untoward incidents during the "symbolic karseva"
on December 6, 1992, Rao had replied that he was confident that with leaders
like Singh around everything would remain in control.
According to Advani, had the verdict
been against the state government, the physical kar seva could have started
on the land belonging to the Nyas committee and had it been upheld the
same could have been started on it.
The BJP leader said the then government
was conscious that certain aspects of the Ayodhya controversy could not
be resolved through the judiciary, but avoided a solution by saying "let
us wait for the court orders'. PTI
