Ayodhya

official workshop of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, is a hive of activity. VHP’s newly-elected international president Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje is personally supervising preparations for the Dharam Sabha along with the body’s vice-president Champat Rai. Rai has a team of volunteers who report back to him every day on the number of households they personally reached out to with invitations for November 25.

The Ram temple is an election promise of the BJP, and the party expects any action on this front to help it consolidate its base in UP, India’s most populous state, which it won emphatically in the 2014 parliamentary and 2017 assembly elections.

“Gesticulating about the Ram Temple on the eve of a general election is one of the BJP’s oldest tricks in the book,” Gilles Verniers, assistant professor of political science at Ashoka University said. “The truth is that had the BJP been determined to actually build a temple in Ayodhya, it would have started the work earlier, since it has a majority both at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh.”

The VHP is hoping that November 25 sends out a clear message. “It will be a clear message to the Centre that the Hindus are no longer willing to wait for construction of Ram Mandir,” Rai says. The Supreme Court has deferred a case on the issue to January and a clamour for a legislation or executive order to build the temple has been increasing.

Aiding the efforts of the VHP, which is at the forefront of the temple movement is the RSS, the ideological parent of many rightwing organisations including the VHP and the BJP. RSS Prant Pracharak Kaushal has decentralised the responsibilities to ground-level volunteers entrusted with the task of mobilising people for the Dharam Sabha. A dedicated team of 40 volunteers of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, is also moving door-to-door to connect with people and invite them to the event.

The Bajrang Dal, another affiliate, recently organised a ‘Trishul Diksha’ event all across the state to recruit young people for the Dharam Sabha. The state government is also involved. In Kanpur, two ministers in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet -- industrial development minister Satish Mahana and micro, small and medium industries and khadi minister Satya Deo Pachauri are coordinating with local RSS leaders . Gyanendra Sachan, Prant Sangh Sanchalak, says: “Since the 1990s, Kanpur has always seen maximum participation of Hindus in all movements related to Ram Mandir and Dharam Sabha will be no exception.”

The BJP adopted a resolution at its Palampur convention in June 1989, endorsing the demand for a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

RSS’ second in command Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi triggered a row last month when he claimed the outfit was ready to launch a 1992-type agitation for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. In a press statement on October 29, VHP’s working president Alok Kumar reiterated request to the Centre to enact a law to build a temple at the disputed site. In a recent meeting of RSS regional pracharaks, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat appealed to volunteers to support the VHP and Bajrang Dal in creating mass awareness on Ram temple construction.

The logistics for the event is being handled by a dedicated team of 1,000 VHP volunteers. forming a minority government with the outside support of the saffron party. The BJP is said to be betting on People’s Conference leader Sajjad Lone to cobble together and lead the front. People’s Conference has two members in the assembly.

So far, only three PDP MLAs (Imran Reza Ansari, his uncle Abid Ansari and legislator Mohammad Abas) have openly evinced an interest in joining such an alliance.

On Tuesday, a founding member of the PDP and Baramulla Lok Sabha MP Muzuffar Hussain Beigh hinted at joining the third front, saying that Lone was like his son and his party like his home.

Senior Congress leaders from J&K will be meeting in New Delhi on Friday to discuss modalities of the alliance. “The Congress wants that secular forces should come together. The party is not averse to this idea of a new alliance,” Azad said.

State Congress chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir said that his party had floated a similar idea in 2014. “Then it was not given a thought. It’s good if both the NC and the PDP are now discussing this.”

BJP state spokesman Altaf Thakur said, “If three parties join to form the new coalition, it means that state will be ruled by three dynasties which will not acceptable to people of the state.”