Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Anil Kumar on Monday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government in Delhi were indulging in cheap publicity stunts regarding the removal of a temple on the main Chandni Chowk road.
Kumar said that both BJP and AAP governments have admitted in the Court that this temple was an encroachment on the pedestrian pathway of Chandni Chowk and it was demolished when Delhi Police, Delhi Government and the BJP together got a direction from the Delhi High Court.
“The normal procedure is that if a temple or other religious structures are removed for the specific purpose of development, then they are allotted alternate places for relocating such shrines,” he said.
Kumar recalled that when the Sant Guru Ravi Das Temple at the Tughlakabad forest area was demolished by the DDA, the Modi Government at the Centre had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court that it was willing “to give place in the same site for reconstruction of the Guru Ravidas Temple'”.
He said that the same justice formula could have been adopted in this case too, but instead, BJP and Arvind Government have indulged in a shadow boxing to stoke religious sentiments.
Kumar said that political “up man ship” should be avoided on such sensitive issues, while adhering to court orders, in the larger public interest, as it is clearly evident that the BJP and AAP Governments were playing a “fixed match” in this case.