- Monday, April 14, 2025
The Ram temple consecration ceremony is a political event centred around the prime minister, the leader said.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who kicked off the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Unite India Justice March) from the eastern to the western most points of India on Sunday (14), on Tuesday (16) said that it is difficult for his party’s leaders to take part in the consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh alleging the event was made into a “political” one centred around prime minister Narendra Modi.
His remarks at a press conference during the march that started from the violence-rocked Indian state of Manipur came days after the party’s top brass declined the invitation to the event. He also said that the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were giving the programme an “election favour”.
“The Ram temple consecration ceremony is a political event centred around the prime minister. The BJP and the RSS are giving an election flavour to it and that is why it is difficult for us to attend,” Gandhi, 53, said.
Read: Major blow for India’s opposition Congress as senior leader quits party on day of march launch
Modi will seek his third straight term in the national elections that are due in a few months.
Invitation was sent to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge; its parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi and leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha or lower chamber of the parliament Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
“It is difficult for us to attend the Ram temple consecration ceremony when our principal opponents the BJP and the RSS have captured the function and turned it into election event,” Gandhi, who conducted a similar Bharat Jodo Yatra connecting the southern to the northern parts between September 2022 and January 2023.
Read: India’s opposition Congress ‘respectfully declines’ Ram Mandir invite: ‘Religion a personal matter’
The leader also said that the opposition INDIA bloc, which a number of anti-Modi parties formed last year to challenge the PM and his ruling BJP, will succeed in its goal.
He added that the seat-sharing discussions among INDIA bloc partners are being carried out amicably.
“I am confident that small problems within the INDIA bloc will be resolved and we will together defeat the BJP. The issue of seat sharing is being taken up with INDIA bloc allies. Talks are going quite well,” Gandhi said.
The latest yatra reached Nagaland on Monday evening.
The march will pass through 100 parliamentary constituencies in 15 states, traversing 6,713 kilometres, mostly in buses but also on foot, and culminate in the financial capital of Mumbai on March 20 or 21.
(With PTI inputs)
