Jaipur, (Samajweekly) The Rajasthan BJP on Friday constituted a five-member committee to probe the demolition of a 300-year-old Shiva temple in Alwar district.
The saffron party also accused Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot of following the footsteps of Mughal rulers Babar and Aurangzeb for bulldozing the temples ‘in the name of removing encroachments’.
The BJP constituted the five-member panel to probe the demolition of a Shiva temple at Sarai Mohalla in Rajgarh in Alwar district on Friday.
The committee, formed under the chairmanship of Sikar MP Swami Sumedhanand, will visit Rajgarh in three days, prepare a factual report, and hand it over to Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia.
Poonia, meanwhile, said that the temple demolition was carried out on the instructions of Gehlot and the state government.
“Demolishing a 300-year-old temple is the result of Ashok Gehlot giving liberty to his MLAs,” Poonia said.
BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Kirodi Lal Meena also slammed the Rajasthan Congress for demolishing the temple and accused them of discrimination and appeasement politics.
Deputy Leader of Opposition, Rajendra Singh Rathore, said while addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters here that by destroying the 300-year-old temple in Alwar, the Rajasthan government has disturbed communal harmony.
“The Congress government has been continuously hurting religious sentiments for the last three years. Earlier it had demolished the Ram Darbar welcome gate on the Salasar-Sujangarh road in Churu district,” Rathore said.
He also slammed Rajgarh MLA Johri Lal Meena and said that his son Deepak Meena is accused of rape, but instead of taking action, the police gave him clean chit.
“Now he has got a bulldozer to erase temples misusing his power,” he said.
Rathore added that on February 8, the Rajgarh municipality had come up with a proposal that the temple located on this road should not be broken in the context of the Gaurav Path scheme. It was not mentioned anywhere in the proposal of the municipality that the 300-year-old temple should be demolished in the name of removal of encroachment.
As evidence, Rathore showed the minutes of the general body meeting of the municipality held on February 8.
While showing a viral video of MLA Johri Lal Meena, Rathore said that in the video, Meena himself is admitting that if 34 councillors accept Congress membership, he can stop the action.
This clearly shows that Congress MLAs are misusing their power by pressuring public representatives, Rathore alleged.
