No mosque near Ram Temple, says priest Ram Vilas Vedanti

Mahant Ram Vilas Vedanti, a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator and ex-chair of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, on Monday turned down a suggestion to construct a mosque on the 67-acre plot of land near the makeshift Ram Temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya.

Vedanti, who claims he played a pivotal role in bringing down the Mughal-era mosque on December 6, 1992, was speaking at a conference organised by Pune’s MIT World Peace University to discuss ways of finding an amicable solution to the long-standing religious dispute.

While members of the conference pitched the idea of constructing places of worship to all religions, including a mosque, within the 67-acre campus, Vedanti was adamant about the construction of a temple on the 2.7 acre where a mosque’s structure stands.

The disputed 2.7-acre piece remains India’s most potent religious flashpoint. More than 3,000 people were killed in the communal violence that followed the demolition of the mosque in 1992.

Vedanti is among the 13 people, including senior BJP leader LK Advani, who has been accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of conspiring to bring down the 16th-century mosque.

“We want an amicable settlement of the issue. The mosque, however, cannot come up at the 67-acre campus. That land belonged to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas (a trust committed to building a Ram temple at a disputed site) and was taken over by the Union government headed by [former PM] Narasimha Rao. We demand that land is restored to the Nyas,” he told HT.

He was, however, open to the suggestion of building boarding, educational, and health facilities within the campus.

Even as the Supreme Court has suggested an amicable solution to the dispute, Vedanti said he is hopeful that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who managed to get a temple constructed in orthodox Saudi Arabia, will find a way for the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

“We are hopeful that the construction will begin before the 2019 Lok Sabha poll … My assessment is that it will begin after December 6, 2018,” he said.

NEW DELHI: