Sabroom (Tripura): Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday announced the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya will be ready by January 1, 2024, the year the Lok Sabha elections will be held.

This is being seen as an indication that Ram Mandir, a plank raked up by the saffron camp since 1990 when BJP leader L K Advani started out on a Rath Yatra to focus on the issue, may again be one of the cornerstones of BJP's campaign in the next general election.

"Rahul baba, listen from Sabroom that a mammoth Ram Mandir will be ready on January 1, 2024," he said attacking Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who is in the midst of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a 3500 kilometres long march from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.

Secretary of Ram Mandir Trust Champat Rai and chief priest of Ram Janmabhoomi temple Acharya Satyendra Das had come out with separate statements appreciating Gandhi for the Bharat Jodo Yatra earlier this week.

Devotees walk past the pillars that Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) say will be used to build a Ram temple at the disputed religious site in Ayodhya, India, October 22, 2019. File photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
Devotees walk past the pillars that Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) say will be used to build a Ram temple at the disputed religious site in Ayodhya, India, October 22, 2019. File photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

Advani's Rath Yatra was believed a major factor in the rise of the BJP in the 1990s which had been politically hit by both the advent of Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and the Mandal Commission award in the late 1980s which saw regional parties espousing the cause of OBCs gaining strength.

The Rath Yatra also saw the spawning of a movement calling for the destruction of the 16th-century Mosque in Ayodhya, which some believed was the site of a palace where Lord Ram was born. It culminated in the public destruction of the mosque by saffron brigade volunteers in December 1992.

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Addressing a public rally at Sabroom in Tripura, where assembly polls are due early this year, Shah said that the Congress and Communists had put the Ram Mandir issue in the jurisdiction of the court for long, whereas Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for it after the Supreme Court's order permitting construction.

The Congress and the CPI(M) are the main opposition parties in the BJP-ruled northeastern state and there are indications that the two will fight the assembly election together.

After decades-long legal battle, the Supreme Court on November 9, 2019, paved the way for the construction of the Ram temple in the disputed site at Ayodhya, where Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992.

The prime minister performed the "Bhoomi puja" for the construction of the temple on August 5, 2020.

At Sabroom in South Tripura district, Shah flagged off a BJP rath yatra, the second one during the day after Dharmanagar in North Tripura district, aimed at highlighting the state government's achievements.

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