The bizzare political drama is another setback for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s ruling BJP following its routing by the Congress party in northern Himachal Pradesh state elections.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi, a senior BJP leader, refused to step down in tribal-majority Jharkhand after the defeat of his coalition government by a voice vote in the state’s 82-seat assembly on Thursday.
“We will not accept the ruling of the speaker...” he told reporters in the state capital Ranchi after the assembly’s presiding officer, Namdhari Singh, ruled a legislative defeat for Marandi’s BJP-led multi-party administration.
Mr Marandi’s tottering government, which enjoyed the support of 43 lawmakers, was reduced to a minority after seven of his cabinet colleagues recently resigned and joined forces with the Congress-backed opposition.
Jharkhand was carved out from the eastern state of Bihar 27 months ago and polls that followed permitted the BJP to form a coalition and rule the state, which accounts for a third of India’s mineral wealth, for five years.
Analysts said the latest development appeared to be a move by speaker Singh, who belongs to a smaller party in the BJP-led coalition, to replace Marandi as Jharkhand chief minister.
DIGGING BEGINS: Indian archaelogists on Thursday moved ahead with a dig in the rubble of the Babri mosque as Hindus lost patience and urged the government to surrender the site for the construction of a Ram temple.
Hindu zealots razed the 16th-century mosque in 1992 and hardline groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad argue the rubble masks a pre-historic temple to their mythological warrior lord Ram.
Some 100 labourers and experts sifted through the bricks and mortar in the town of Ayodhya, 700 kilometres southeast of New Delhi, in line with court orders for a scientific answer to the emotive dispute.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP rode to power in 1996 on the back of the temple-mosque row, and the premier’s predecessor, V.P. Singh, on Thursday called the excavation a futile exercise.
“It will not serve any purpose if the VHP and its cohorts keep up their belligerence should the excavations not establish the existence of a temple and refuse to give up their claim,” the former prime minister said.
“As in the past, they (VHP) do not have any regard for the law of the land and do not obey anyone. This is what causes concern,” Mr Singh said of the organization.
The sacrilege 10 years ago sparked India’s bloodiest riots since 1947, and by official estimates, left at least 2,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless across the country.
The VHP, which is at the forefront of the drive to build the Ram temple, on Thursday turned its back on the Ayodhya dig, which was ordered by a court on Tuesday.
“The excavation work is taking place at a snail’s pace and can take months to complete,” VHP secretary, Ramphal Singh, told reporters in Ayodhya. He called for the immediate handover of the site to his organization.
Witnesses said the team was digging four trenches, each measuring four metres by four metres, with plans to expand the operation.
Proceeding with caution, the team had dug 20.3 centimetres by the end of Thursday, witnesses said, adding that the team had dug down to the floor of an old courtyard of the destroyed mosque.—AFP