Union minister Giriraj Singh slammed the Congress government on Thursday for their declination for the invite to attend the Ram temple ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22.
“These people are seasonal Hindus, when they feel they have to get votes, they try to become soft Hindus. No one in the Congress has gone to Ayodhya since Jawaharlal Nehru. It was the Congress party itself that had done the work of pending the case in the court, hence they do not have the moral strength to go to Ayodhya,” the minister said while speaking to news agency ANI.
It was on Wednesday when Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Lok Sabha floor leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said in a statement that they will not attend the ceremony, calling it a “RSS/BJP event.” “Religion is a personal matter. But the RSS/BJP have long made a political project of the temple in Ayodhya. The inauguration of the incomplete temple by the leaders of the BJP and the RSS has been obviously brought forward for electoral gain,” the Congress said in a statement. The statement had evoked a sharp criticism from the ruling BJP.
“Ram is our Lord. He represents the soul and the identity of Bharat. The turning down of the invitation to the Pran Pratishtha by the Congress is a rejection of India’s identity and culture. It is because of such positions that the Congress takes that it has been reduced to the margins today,” Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister was quoted by ANI as saying.
(With PTI inputs)
