BJP president J.P. Nadda on Monday said that “court and Constitution” would decide matters such as the Gyanvapi and Shahi Idgah controversies, appearing to tactically distance the party in public from the kind of polarising issue that powers its poll narrative.

“These issues are decided by the court and the Constitution. The BJP implements it (court orders) in letter and spirit,” Nadda said to a question during a news conference.

Nadda had been asked whether the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah in Mathura were on the BJP’s radar, now that the Ram temple controversy in Ayodhya had been legally resolved in the Hindu side’s favour.

Sangh parivar members and supporters have filed several court cases seeking handover of these two mosques to Hindus, claiming they were built after demolishing Hindu temples and stoking a campaign similar to the Ayodhya movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

Nadda said the BJP had not adopted any such issue, barring the one over the Ram Janmabhoomi, as its official agenda. The BJP had officially adopted the Ram temple demand at its 1989 Palampur national executive meeting.

However, despite the BJP’s official silence on the alleged discovery of a “Shivalinga” on the premises of the Gyanvapi mosque, which adjoins the Kashi Vishwanath temple, party leaders have in their personal capacity been making comments calculated to polarise communities on the issue.

The Kashi and Mathura controversies figured more than once during Nadda’s media address as he sought to stress that the Narendra Modi government was focused only on the welfare of the poor and the country’s development.

Asked whether communal issues like the Gyanvapi controversy had not been whipped up during the Modi government’s eight-year-old tenure to polarise voters, Nadda proclaimed the BJP’s innocence and blamed the media.

“We are functioning on the principle of ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayas’,” he said, airing the government’s pet inclusive slogan.

“The media raises some issues, and when they raise them, society listens,” he added.

Asked about the deepening of Muslims’ feeling of alienation over the past eight years, Nadda seemed to suggest that it was the minority community’s responsibility to “respond” to the ruling dispensation.

“As a political party we want to accommodate all. We as a political party are ready for this. But in society there are different kinds of people. Some respond earlier, some respond later, some respond after decades, some respond after much time has passed,” he said.

“That depends on them. But so far as our conduct is concerned, we are for a strong nation, one nation and equal participation of everyone in it.”

Asked whether the Centre would push for a uniform civil code — one of the BJP’s original “core agendas” along with the Ram temple and Article 370 — Nadda was evasive.

“We are for justice to all and appeasement of none,” he said.

The governments of some BJP-ruled states have begun efforts to work out and enforce a uniform civil code but there is no clarity whether the central government was planning such legislation.

Many believe that the BJP would push for a uniform civil code ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.