Congress, not Rajiv Gandhi, responsible for unlocking of Babri Masjid gates, Arun Nehru behind it: Aiyar

Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar claims Congress, not Rajiv Gandhi, responsible for unlocking Babri Masjid gates.

Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the party and not former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking of Babri Masjid gates and asserted that the “BJP-planted” Arun Nehru was behind it.

Mr. Aiyar also said his guess is that had Gandhi been alive and been the Prime Minister instead of P.V. Narasimha Rao, Babri Masjid would still be standing, the BJP would have been given an appropriate riposte and he would have found a solution similar to the one that the Supreme Court arrived at years later.

He hailed the Congress top brass’ decision to decline the invitation for the January 22 Ram temple consecration ceremony.

Mr. Aiyar was speaking on Jan. 19 at the launch of his book “The Rajiv I Knew And Why He Was India’s Most Misunderstood Prime Minister”, published by Juggernaut. “He [Gandhi] was saying keep the masjid and build the temple. The Supreme Court said make the temple and make the masjid somewhere else. In a sense, the judgement is the same as the conclusion Rajiv was coming towards,” Mr. Aiyar said.

During a free-wheeling chat with senior journalist Vir Sanghvi, the Congress leader said the BJP of Atal Bihari Vajpayee was “stolen” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

After the NDA lost, there were 10 years of Congress rule. “At the end of that Congress rule, things were really going bad, we had a Prime Minister who was not able to take decisions and the result was that into that vacuum stepped the BJP of Modi,” Mr. Aiyar said.

Mr. Aiyar’s book talks about Gandhi’s premiership (October 31, 1984-December 2, 1989) as seen by him while working closely with the late Congress president in the Prime Minister’s Office.