Claiming that opposition leaders did not attend the consecration ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya as they were afraid of losing their vote bank, Union Home minister Amit Shah on Sunday said those in the BJP do not fear anyone.
Addressing a rally to garner support for Neeraj Tripathi, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Lok Sabha poll candidate from the Allahabad constituency, Shah said the ongoing election is a battle between "those who opened fire on the devotees of Lord Ram and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who built the Ram temple".
"The Congress-SP kept the Ram temple (matter) pending for 70 years. The SP government opened fire on kar sevaks. You made Modiji the prime minister for the second time, he won the court case for the Ram temple, performed the 'bhoomipujan' (ground-breaking ceremony) and also the 'pran pratishtha' (consecration) of the temple," he said.
Even after the temple trust members invited Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders Dimple Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav for the consecration ceremony, they did not take part in it as they were afraid of losing their vote bank, the senior BJP leader claimed.
"Do you know who their vote bank is? You are not their vote bank. Infiltrators are their vote bank. But we in the BJP are not afraid of anyone. Modiji not only built the Ram temple, but also decorated the 'darbar' of Kashi Vishwanath, which was broken by Aurangzeb, and the Somnath temple is being built of gold.
"On one side, there are people who fired at the devotees of Lord Ram, on the other side, there is Narendra Modi, who built the Ram temple. The election is between these two. This election is to decide the future of the country, make it secure, end terrorism, Naxalism and poverty. This is an election to build a great India," he said.
The January 22 consecration ceremony was led by Modi, who also gave a clarion call to go beyond the temple's construction to build the foundation of a "strong, capable and divine" India of the next 1,000 years.
Scrapping Article 370 of the Constitution that bestowed special rights on Jammu and Kashmir, building a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya and implementing a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) across the country have been the BJP's poll plank for decades.
Allahabad is scheduled to go to polls in the sixth phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election on May 25.
The main contest here is between Neeraj Tripathi, son of former West Bengal governor and Uttar Pradesh Assembly speaker Keshari Nath Tripathi, and Ujjwal Ram Singh, son of former SP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Reoti Raman Singh.
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