Hyderabad, October 08: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and president of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs M Venkaiah Naidu has appealed to people to end Ayodhya controversy by paving the way for construction of a temple at the place where Ram Lalla idol stood, in the wake of the Allahabad High Court judgment.
“If it was solved peacefully, the rest could be settled amicably. Otherwise the entire process had to be started afresh,” he said at a press conference here today.
He pointed out that the nation had exercised utmost restraint and by and large the verdict was welcomed. “Some pseudo secularists and the so-called leftist-intellectuals who maintained that they would welcome the verdict till 4.15 p.m showed their true colours once it was out,” Venkaiah Naidu said.
“They started terming it a ‘panchayat judgment’ and one on faith rather than on law. As people didn’t buy their argument, they started a malicious campaign which doesn’t augur well for the nation. I would say it’s a faith upheld by law,” he said.
He maintained that unlike Mecca and Jerusalem, the construction was just a symbol of Babar’s conquest and had no religious significance.
Regarding the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), he said they should be supplemented by a printer which would print the vote recorded in the machine but would be kept confidential. “It can be used as evidence if the election is challenged on the ground of tampering of EVMs,” the BJP leader said.
This was the BJP’s official version at an all-party meeting held on EVMs under the aegis of the Election Commission on Monday. “We will raise the matter in the coming session of Parliament,” he added.
‘Paid news’ was spreading like a disease, Venkaiah Naidu said and demanded that the election commission should deem it an electoral offence and punish all those who resort to it, including the candidate.
“Palle Pilupu, which will conclude on October 6, received a good response. I have told Kishan Reddy to draft the schedule for the second phase of the programme after analysing the response,” he said.
Coming down heavily on the Congress, he said the party would lose people’s confidence if it continued its tactics of destabilising the BJP in Karnataka. “It has already slipped to the third position in the two byelections held recently,” he pointed out.
Later, Venkaiah Naidu distributed certificates to those who completed courses at Swasakthi, a job-oriented training institute being run jointly by the Swarnabharat Trust and SEW Foundation.
“All 150 students were trained free of cost. Fifty of them already got jobs,” said SEW Foundation MD V Rajasekhar.
—Agencies