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Babri Report: Liberhan Commission Report - BJP, Congress Apprehensive |
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Sixteen years after, the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya is a dead issue politically, but both the Congress and the BJP are running scared of the fallout of the report of the Liberhan Commission, which probed the incident. Justice M.S. Liberhan submitted the report to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, June 30, the last day of the 48th extension which had been given to the one man commission of inquiry headed by him.
The contents of the report have not been made public as the Union Home Ministry is said to be examining it and the Government says that the report will be tabled in Parliament with an action taken report in due course of time. Reports indicate that this may not happen during the current budget session of Parliament.
Reports based on leaks appearing in the media indicate that the Commission came to the conclusion that the Babri Masjid demolition was pre-planned. It has blamed the dastardly act on prominent personalities in the Sangh Parivar, but has reportedly stopped short of putting the blame on senior BJP leader Lal Krishan Advani who played the prime role in giving a political dimension to the Ram Temple movement by undertaking his famous or infamous Rath Yatra. The Liberhan Commission is also said to have indicted then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao for not acting effectively to stop the demolition.
Both the Congress and the BJP have reacted to the submission of the Liberhan panel report in a low key manner. Perhaps they are not sure of how the people of the country will react to the Commission’s findings, when they finally come out in the open. Some analysts say that the best bet for the BJP will be if the report comes down on the party with a heavy hand, because this may just be the straw which the saffron organization is looking for to revive its political fortunes after its worst ever performance in Lok Sabha elections in a quarter century. In this scenario, the party hopes that the Ram temple issue, which has almost disappeared from the public mind, will stage a come back. But this hope may not bear fruit, as the voters did not take too kindly to attempts by the party to rake up the Hindutva theme in the Lok Sabha elections. The people have moved on from the Ram temple agitation era and are unlikely to be swayed any more by attempts in the same direction. What they are looking for is a Government which delivers on good governance and acts on the concerns of the aam admi (common man).
The same reasoning is perhaps responsible for the unease in the Congress on the Liberhan Commission report. The party does not want to hand over a live political issue to the BJP on a platter. It fears that revival of the Ram temple issue will again alienate the Muslim voters from the party and make them turn back to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. The party realises that a major reason for its success in the Lok Sabha elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh, was the Muslims returning to the party. As in the case of the BJP, the fear is unfounded as the Muslim voters, as other sections of the electorate, are looking for improvement in their living conditions, and are unlikely to be swayed by emotive factors.
Actually, the submission of the long awaited and delayed Liberhan Commission report presents an opportunity to exorcise the ghosts of the past and make a new beginning. The opportunity is not only for the nation as a whole, but also for the BJP and the Congress political formations. The report needs to be made public and discussed widely: this would be the best way to close a sad chapter in the nation’s history.
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