Ayodhya visit on ‘Makar Sankranti’ by UP Congress workers on: Ajay Rai

Lucknow : While the Congress top brass has declined the invitation to the January 22 consecration ceremony at Ayodhya’s Ram temple, the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit plans to go ahead with its own event a week earlier in the holy town.

Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai had on Sunday said, “On January 15, I am going to Ayodhya. Our general secretary and UP in-charge Avinash Pande and senior leaders Pramod Tiwari and P L Punia will also visit Ayodhya. In all, around 100 Congressmen will go there.” On Wednesday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party president Sonia Gandhi and leader of the party in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury turned down the invitation to attend the consecration ceremony.

The Congress leadership “respectfully declined” the invitation to attend the Ram temple consecration ceremony, while accusing the BJP of making it into a “political project” for electoral gains and asserting that religion is a “personal matter”. Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh had questioned the motive behind the inauguration of the “incomplete” temple by the leaders of the BJP and the RSS. However, Rai said on Thursday that he along with AICC in-charge Avinash Pande will go ahead with their programme of visiting the temple town on ‘Makar Sankranti’.

“There is no change in the programme. The Congressmen from the state including me will go to Ayodhya as per our scheduled programme,” Rai told PTI over phone. “The January 22 programme related to the consecration ceremony is different. We are going on ‘Makar Sankranti’,” the UPCC president said when asked about the party leaders declining the invitation for the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony.