Ayodhya: Will try constructing Ram Temple even before 2018, says BJP MP Vinay Katiyar

Bajrang Dal founder-president and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Vinay Katiyar has said the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya will start on or before 2018.

Speaking to ANI, Khatiyar said the land solely belongs to Lord Ram and no one else.

"If any Muslim community has supported the building of the Ram Mandir, then it is welcome news and,if more people come out in support of building the temple, I will be very happy," said Katiyar.

Talking about the construction of the temple Katiyar said that it will be started soon.

"It is not necessary that it will be constructed in 2018, the construction work can start before 2018," Khatiyar said.

He further said that this is "Ram Janam Bhoomi" and there is nothing there except Ram.

Earlier on July 6, at least three trucks of red stones were brought for building the Ram temple in Ayodhya, under the supervision of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

The stones were unloaded at Ayodhya's Ramsevak Puram, the storehouse for Ram Mandir construction set up by the VHP.

The carving of stones for the temple is being done under the supervision of an organisation of VHP, 'Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas' and saints.

In August this year, the Supreme Court had said that it will commence final hearing of the long-standing Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute from December 5, a day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the medieval-era structure.

The apex court, after an intense deliberation for more than one-and-half-hours on August 12, reached a consensus on commencement of the hearing on a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court in four civil suits.

The high court had ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acre area at Ayodhya among the parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Lord Ram Lalla.

Another sect of the Muslims under the banner of Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh recently went to the court offering a solution that a mosque could be built in a Muslim- dominated area at a "reasonable distance" from the disputed site in Ayodhya.

However, its intervention has been opposed by the All India Sunni Waqf Board which claimed that judicial adjudication between the two sects had already been done in 1946 by declaring the mosque, which was demolished on December 6, 1992, as that belonging to the Sunnis.

A specially constituted bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, asked the contesting parties to complete the translation of the exhibits of the documents likely to be relied upon into English within twelve weeks since these were in eight different languages including Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Pali and Arabic.

The bench, also comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer, asked the Uttar Pradesh Government to complete within ten weeks the translation of the evidence recorded for adjudication of the title dispute in the high court into English.

The bench made it clear that the parties would have to strictly adhere to the time frame fixed by it and that no adjournment would be given under any circumstance.

The top court said it would not allow the matter to take any shape other than the civil appeals and would adopt the same procedure as was done by the high court.

It said it would strictly go by the Civil Procedure Code and the Evidence Act.

The court has said that the Ayodhya dispute is a sensitive and sentimental issue which needs to be settled amicably and through consensus.

The court suggested that if required, a principal mediator can be chosen by the court to settle the issue.

The first recorded instances of religious violence in Ayodhya occurred in the 1850s over a nearby mosque at Hanuman Garhi. The Babri mosque was attacked by Hindus in the process.

Since then, local Hindu groups made occasional demands that they should have the possession of the site and that they should be allowed to build a temple on the site, all of which were denied by the colonial government.

In 1946, an offshoot of the Hindu Mahasabha called Akhil Bharatiya Ramayana Mahasabha (ABRM) started an agitation for the possession of the site.

In 1949, Sant Digvijay Nath of Gorakhnath Math joined the ABRM and organised a nine-day continuous recitation of Ramcharit Manas, at the end of which the Hindu activists broke into the mosque and placed idols of Rama and Sita inside.

People were led to believe that the idols had 'miraculously' appeared inside the mosque. The date of the event was December 22, 1949.

Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru insisted that the idols should be removed. However, K. K. K. Nair, a then local official known for his Hindu nationalist connections, refused to carry out orders, claiming that it would lead to communal riots. The police locked the gates so that the public (Hindus and Muslims) could not enter.

On December 6, 1992, the VHP and its associates, including the BJP, organised a rally involving 150,000 VHP and BJP kar sevaks at the site of the mosque.

The ceremonies included speeches by the BJP leaders such as L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti.

The mob grew restive through the duration of the speeches, and stormed the mosque shortly after noon.

A police cordon placed there to protect the mosque was heavily outnumbered.

The mosque was attacked with a number of improvised tools, and brought to the ground in a few hours. 

-ANI