Miffed Over Delay, RSS Says Construction of Ram Mandir Shelved for 2025

New Delhi: In a surprise statement, RSS second-in-command Bhaiyyaji Joshi has said that the Ram Temple in Ayodhya will come up in 2025, a year after the 2024 next Lok Sabha elections.

“1952 mein Somnath mandir ki sthapna ke saath desh gati se aage badhaa. 2025 mein Ram Janmabhoomi ke upar mandir banne ke baad fir is disha ko aur gati prapt hone wali hai...Ayodhya ke mandir nirmaan ke baad desh agle 150 saalon ke liye punji praapt karega (India progressed rapidly after the Somnath Temple was established in 1952. India will again start prospering after the Ram Mandir is built in 2025. After the Ram Temple is established at Ayodhya, the country will be blessed for the next 150 years)," news agency ANI quoted Joshi as saying.

Joshi's suo moto intervention while speaking at Kumbh in Prayagraj comes a month after VHP’s show of strength in Delhi. At the rally, Joshi had sought an ordinance for the construction of temple.

“We are not engaged in a conflict with any community. We are not begging but expressing sentiments. Enacting a law is the only option for Ram temple. The movement will continue till the promise is fulfilled," Joshi had said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has effectively ruled out the ordinance route in the near future, saying the government till take “necessary steps" after the judicial process is over.

The judicial process will gather pace on January 29 when a five-judge bench to hear the Ayodhya title dispute case will be reconstituted following the recusal of Justice UU Lalit.

The judge had recused himself after senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for one of the Muslim litigants, told the bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi that Justice Lalit in 1997 appeared for former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh in one of the matters connected to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute.

The batch of cross petitions are rooted in the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement trifurcating the disputed site giving one each to Lord Lalla, Nirmohi Akhara and original Muslim litigant.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at a function to mark the silver jubilee of the Prahaar Samaaj Jagruti Sanstha in Nagpur, questioned why soldiers were dying on borders during peacetime. “If there is no war, there is no reason why a soldier should die on the border. But it is happening."

Signalling displeasure with government policies, Bhagwat said, “Neither you nor I make policies, but we all have to bear the impact. Inflation increased, I did not increase it, neither did you, but we all have to suffer."

In damage control mode after his reported statement, Joshi claimed he had been misquoted and that Ram Temple should be built by 2025. “It is our wish that Ram Mandir should be built before 2025. The government should take the decision… I did not say that Ram Mandir construction should begin by 2025. I meant that it should be ready by 2025. That is our wish," he said.