April 1, 2003	Tuesday	Muharram 28, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

NEW DELHI, March 31: Nearly 20,000 Hindu militants were detained by police in Delhi on Monday after they vowed to take unspecified direct action to claim the disputed site of a razed mosque in Ayodhya.

The arrests followed the Supreme Court’s verdict earlier on Monday denying any religious activity around the disputed site that was taken over by the government after the Babri mosque was torn down by a Hindu mob in December 1992.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said the Supreme Court’s decision had sought to impeded its plans to build a temple to the Hindu Lord Ram in Ayodhya and as such it had “shut down any scope for compromise on the issue”.

VHP’s working president Ashok Singhal said: “We should have got the undisputed land so that we could begin construction of the temple. Now it will be direct action and we will not rest till we get the whole plot, including the disputed land.”

Monday’s order by a five-member constitutional bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the petition of the federal government that had sought to annul the apex court’s earlier orders of maintaining status quo on the entire acquired land in Ayodhya.

Opposition parties have expressed fears that the government may not implement Monday’s court order.

Among them, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said in a statement that it had feared that the Vajpayee government, instead of upholding the apex court directions issued in March 2002 had moved the court to vacate this order in blatant partisanship with the VHP and “to placate the communal forces who were refusing to accept the court verdict on the dispute.”

Opposition parties said it was the responsibility of the government “to control and contain forces like the VHP and the Bajrang Dal who are brazenly talking in terms of violating the court order.”

AFP adds: The government last month asked the court to lift its ban on any religious activity on 67 acres of land near the demolished mosque.

But the court said the government’s request was rejected “to maintain communal harmony” at the site which is heavily barricaded and barred to civilians.

It said its earlier order banning all religious activity on the site would continue until the dispute over the ownership of the land was settled by a court dealing with it in the northern city of Allahabad.

“We are of the view that the Supreme Court March 13/14, 2002 order should be operative till the Allahabad High Court disposes the title suits,” the order said.

On December 6, 1992, Hindu zealots tore down the Babri mosque, which was built in the 16th century by Moghul emperor Babar.

The act sparked off widespread sectarian riots that claimed the lives of 2,000 people in India.

Hindu militant groups, spearheaded by the VHP, want to build a temple on the site, but the sensitive dispute is now in the hands of the courts.

In its application to the court, the government had said the situation had changed since last year, so the ban could be lifted.