Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said he has not received an invitation for the consecration ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya to be held on January 22.
“I have not been invited to the inauguration of Ram Temple…BJP is doing politics in the name of Ram temple…The ruling party does not have any concrete program to garner people’s support, so it seems they are trying to create a different opinion,” Pawar was quoted by ANI as saying.“Don’t know if it (BJP) is using the issue for political or commercial purposes. We are happy that the temple is coming up for which many have contributed,” he was quoted by PTI as saying. Pawar-led NCP’s ally Shiv Sena (UBT) faction has said it does not need an invitation to party president Uddhav Thackeray to visit Ayodhya for the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony.
‘We are in Ayodhya before BJP’
“There is no need for Uddhav Thackeray to be invited to Ayodhya. We are in Ayodhya before you (the BJP),” Sena MP Sanjay Raut was quoted by PTI as saying. Earlier in the day, a Trinamool Congress leader had said that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will not attend the grand ceremony in Ayodhya. “There is no question of Mamata Banerjee or any other representative of the TMC attending the Ram Mandir inauguration at Ayodhya next month. We don’t believe in mixing politics with religion,” a senior TMC leader said. TMC’s rival Communist Party of India (Marxist) has already turned down the invitation for the ceremony. However, there is a division within the opposition ‘INDIA’ bloc on whether to attend the ceremony or not. The Congress thanked the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust but has not revealed its stand on attending the consecration ceremony that will witness the participation of nearly 6,000 people including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.“They have invited us, we are very much thankful to them for inviting us, let us (see),” said Congress general secretary KC Venugopal.
