New Delhi, December 08: After two postponements, the Lok Sabha on Monday took up the debate on the Liberhan Commission report on Babri Masjid demolition indicting the BJP top brass and exonerating the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao.
The debate was postponed on two occasions because of the non-availabilty of the Hindi version of the over 900-page report which Justice M S Liberhan submitted 17 years after the demolition on 6th December 1992.
The report was tabled on 24th November, a day after its premature leakage in the media.
Before CPI veteran Gurdas Dasgupta initiated the discussion under non-voting Rule 193, Speaker Meira Kumar urged the Members to present their views in the most ‘dispassionate’ manner, keeping in view the ‘politically sensitive’ issue.
She said the Members should not hurt the sentiments of any section of people and also not make any reference to people who were not present in the House to defend themselves.
Dasgupta called upon political parties to treat the discussion as an opportunity for introspection on how a fundamentalist political party could impose its will on people when a Government with an overwhelming majority was at the helm.
He said the nation would like to know why the demolition could not be prevented and why the political system failed.
“We were put to shame,” he said.
BJP dismissed the Liberhan Commission report as a ”political document” for the character assassination of its top brass adding it is ”baseless, biased and prejudiced”.
In his hour-long speech in the Lok Sabha which was interrupted throughout by the Congress and Muslim members of other parties, BJP President Rajnath Singh accused Justice M S Liberhan of having written the report with a pre-set mind to reach a desired conclusion based on assumptions and presumptions.
Punching holes in the 1,000-page report, the BJP leader pointed out numerous distortions and overtly political statements which smacked of pre-concieved agenda to run down the principal opposition party of the country which had ruled at the Centre for six years.
He said the one-man Commission did not visit Ayodhya even once during 17 long years it took to probe the circumstances and sequence of events which led to the demolition of the disputed structure on 6th December 1992.
Dubbing the report “incomplete”, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party held both BJP and Congress responsible for the demolition.
Alleging collusion between the two parties, he asked the ruling Congress to come clean on what transpired between then Home Minister S B Chavan and BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee when the former persuaded the latter to break his fast two days before the demolition.
The Samajwadi leader asked if Congress can deny the involvement of Shankar Sinh Vaghela, who later become a Minister in UPA-1, Sanjay Nirupam and Narayan Rane, then in Shiv Sena and now in Congress, as also saffron-turned-NCP leader Chaggan Bhujbal.
Both Rane and Bhujbal are now part of the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra led by Ashok Chavan, son of then Home Minister, he added.
He said he lost his government to maintain communal haromy in Uttar Pradesh due to police firing in which 16 people lost their lives but the Congress has not yet apprised the nation of the loss of lives in the aftermath of the demolition.
He defended Liberhan’s finding on the involvement of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, adding the saffron leader “instigated” people’s sentiments and hence was guilty.
At the same time, he also wanted Congress government to come clean on the meeting between then Union Minister Arjun Singh and UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, adding since the Congress ruled at the Centre it can not be absolved of the responsibility.
Jagdambika Pal, Congress, suggested several remedial steps so as to ensure that the tragic and shameful incident did not take place again which included the setting up of a National Tribunal, the expediting of a related case in Rai Bareli court and punishment to the guilty who have been named in the Report.
Pal, who was repeatedly interrupted by BJP members, emphasised that for the BJP it was not the love for building a Ram Temple but consolidating its vote bank by fanning communal frenzy and hate politics.
The Congress member, when repeatedly disturbed, said,” This is how they have demonstrated their political intolerance. They have displayed their fundamentalist action in the House as well.”
He also stressed that the nation must learn proper lessons from the tragic incident of demolition of the Babri Masjid.
‘It is necessary to protect our pillars of secularism and democracy. Besides, there are bigger issues like that of unemployment, staring in the face of the nation”.
BSP leader Dara Singh Chohan also held both BJP and Congress responsible for the demolition, alleging the Liberhan report has been prepared by them jointly.
—Agencies