New Delhi: Former Union minister and senior Congress leader Dr Karan Singh Friday differed with his party leadership’s decision to decline the invitation to the 22 January Ram temple ‘pran pratishtha’, saying that after the Supreme Court judgment, “there should be no hesitation in attending the function, if invite”.
Singh’s statement came after he was invited to the event, which, he “regretfully” said, he won’t be able to attend on medical grounds. The 93-year-old leader, who has been largely inactive in the Congress for quite some time, stated, “Today I have received the beautiful invitation to the historic Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the Shri Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on 22nd January 2024 which will be celebrated by about a billion Hindus around the globe.”
He added that he made a “modest personal donation” of Rs 11 lakh towards the construction.
Singh’s statement comes two days after the Congress leadership including Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury declined the invitation to the event Wednesday.
They had said the “BJP/RSS have long made a political project of the temple in Ayodhya”. The party accused the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of bringing forward the inauguration date of the “incomplete temple” for electoral gain.
On Friday, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera clarified that the party is not against visiting the Ram temple, but against the “politicisation” of the 22 January event. Saying that it was a “personal invite”, Khera added that though it was declined by the top brass, several other Congress leaders, who were invited, were going for the event.
In 2022, Dr Karan Singh had said, “Yes, I’m in Congress but there’s no contact, nobody asks me anything… My relations with the party are almost zero now.”
Last year in October, when he was drafted in a state-level executive committee of the party’s J&K unit, Singh asked to be dropped saying he had not been active in state politics for several years.
(Edited Tikli Basu)
Also read: ‘No dharm, only politics’ — Congress on incomplete Ram temple consecration, cites Shankaracharyas