New Delhi, February 25
Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani today put the ball in the Congress court on the sensitive Ramjanmabhoomi temple issue saying that the government was ready to find a solution to the Ayodhya tangle through an Act of Parliament, if the main Opposition party agreed to it.
Addressing the BJP Parliamentary meeting in place of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who is away in Kuala Lumpur for the NAM summit, Mr Advani said the temple issue could be resolved either through the courts or through discussions between the contending parties or through an Act in Parliament.
Since the BJP did not have a majority in Parliament, it was willing to discuss the issue with its NDA allies, if the Congress was also forthcoming on finding a solution to the dispute at the highest forum of democracy, Mr Advani asserted.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the party was committed on issues like ban on cow slaughter and a Uniform Civil Code but would not take them up as it was bound by NDA’s agenda.
He said the Congress was raking up the Ayodhya issue “for the sake of vote-bank politics”.
“Why Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her party is silent on the issue of bringing a Bill banning cow slaughter,” Mr Advani asked.
Briefing newspersons after the meeting, BJP spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said neither the Congress nor its President Sonia Gandhi had come out with their views on the cow protection Act despite the BJP repeatedly seeking the party’s viewpoints. The Congress was raising the issue along with Ayodhya only for the sake of vote-bank politics, he alleged.
Taking strong exception to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf’s attempts to raise the issue of self-determination for people of Jammu and Kashmir at the NAM summit at Kuala Lumpur, Mr Advani said it was highly condemnable on the part of Pakistan to raise a bilateral issue in a multi-lateral forum like NAM. The Prime Minister had done a commendable job in putting forth India’s viewpoints in an effective manner, he added.
He said if self-determination was allowed in Pakistan, Sindh and Frontier provinces would secede from that country at the first given opportunity. India was not for self-determination on the basis of language or religion, he said.
Some MPs at the meeting wanted the government to introduce the value added tax (VAT) system in consultation with the business community to avoid confusion.
