SC ruling in Babri case: Surgical strike on Advani's presidential ambitions

Not the first time that his alleged role in Babri demolition will cost Advani a sought after job.

According to some reports, in Bhubaneswar during the national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi to join him at the dinner table where he sat with party chief Amit Shah and some others.

The reports speculated how this could signal Joshi being ahead in the race to be the BJP nominee for the presidential election. A section within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has also been promoting Joshi’s name for the presidential elections.

In contrast, senior party leader LK Advani’s name for the presidential polls as a consensus candidate has come primarily from regional leaders. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee have indicated that Advani’s name would have been acceptable to them.

There were others in the party who pointed to the tense relations between Advani, Joshi and Modi to argue that the two leaders would never be the party’s choice.

But if Advani and Joshi had nursed any hopes to be in the race for the post of the president, the election to which are due by July, the Supreme Court order today is a surgical strike on that.

The Supreme Court said Advani, Joshi, union minister Uma Bharti, among 13 others, will have to stand trial for criminal conspiracy to demolishing the Babri Masjid structure on December 6, 1992. The court has fixed two years for completion of the trial that is currently ongoing in Lucknow, and that the trial judge will not be transferred.

The SC order might put pressure on Advani and Joshi to quit their Lok Sabha membership, as also demands that Uma Bharti not just quit from the Narendra Modi cabinet but also her Lok Sabha membership. Kalyan Singh is a Governor and gets immunity till such time that he continues in the post.

But beyond the immediate, the criminal conspiracy case in Lucknow will run in tandem with the civil case on the dispute over the ownership of the land in the Supreme Court in New Delhi.

This could help Sangh Parivar outfits to create an atmosphere of support to Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Outfits like the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal would not likely to lose the opportunity to rake up the issue, come into prominence, as they did in the run up to and after the demolition. This should, as it has in the past, help BJP electorally.