Congress claims 'Rajiv Gandhi laid foundation stone to Ram Mandir' days before Bhumi puja

Switching gears from questioning PM Modi's Ayodhya visit, Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh, on Monday, stirred a new controversy claiming 'Foundation stone-laying has already been done'. Referring to the 1986 move by then-PM Rajiv Gandhi to allow a 'shilanyas ceremony' to be held in the 'make-shift temple' inside Babri Masjid. PM Modi is scheduled to perform the Bhoomi Pujan at Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi on Wednesday - August 5.

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Digvijaya: 'Rajiv Gandhi laid foundation'Digvijaya: 'Rajiv Gandhi laid foundation'

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What did Rajiv Gandhi do?

The Ram Janmabhoomi dispute claiming the existence of a temple prior to the mosque has been contested for 461 years, but the point of contention started when in December 1949. A crowd entered the mosque and installed a Hindu idol beneath the Central dome of the mosque, believed to be the birthplace of Ram. This led to the area being sealed off till 1986.

In 1986, a Faizabad civil court, ordered the area to unsealed, allowing Hindus to worship under the Central dome of the mosque where the makeshift temple had been installed. Following this order, then-PM Rajiv Gandhi opened the locks to the disputed territory and let the foundation ceremony be performed in the make-shift temple. Five years later, in 1991 BJP veteran L K Advani started his rath yatra and in 1992 kar-sevaks destroyed the Babri Masjid, culminating in communal riots.

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Ram Janmabhoomi pujan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the Ram Temple slated to be built in Ayodhya on August 5. The Ram Janmabhoomi Tirtha Kshetra has invited 150 guests - including Home Minister Amit Shah, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, several other saints and social distancing norms will be followed. BJP veterans L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti are set to attend on video conference. The trust has estimated that construction of the temple will be completed in 3-3.5 years i.e by 2023- the year of the Uttar Pradesh State polls. 

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Larsen & Toubro (L&T) which will construct the temple will use Sompura Marbles and have started collecting soil samples to begin foundation work. As per L&T's design drawing, the temple is set to be constructed over two floors -spanning  161ft in length, 140ft in width, and 128 ft in height, comprising of 5 domes. The trust is planning to contact 10 Crore families across 4 Lakh localities of the country for fund collection. In November 2019, the Supreme Court had ended the seven-decade long land dispute, awarding the Ram Janmabhoomi land to the Hindu parties and offering an alternated land to the Muslim parties.