Bjp May Dilute Ayodhya While Drafting Cmp

The BJP is likely to dilute its commitment to construct the Ram temple at Ayodhya in order to formulate a Common Minimum Programme acceptable to its supporting parties.

The CMP would contain a reference to Ayodhya but the partys stand to facilitate construction of the temple through legislation would be dropped. Instead the CMP is likely to stress that it would try to resolve the controversy through negotiation with leaders of the minority community, a senior BJP leader yesterday said.

None of the leaders of the BJPs suporting parties like the Samta Party, the Akali Dal, the Lok Shakti and the Biju Janata Dal have clarified their reservations with the BJP on this count though they have pubicly distanced themselves from the BJPs agenda.

 

This way the BJP could also keep its constituents in the sangh parivar happy. The Samata Party, for one, will have no problems if the BJP spoke of resolving the Ayodhya dispute through negotiations. The Samata Party would like the contending parties in the dispute to await the court verdict, but would welcome it if the issue is resolved through negotiations, party general secretary Jaya Jaitley said.

On other controverisal issues like scrapping Article 370 and formulating a uniform civil code, the BJP is likely to drop the first, but would continue its agenda on the civil code, the BJP leader held. There was not much disagreement between the BJP and its allies on the civil code.

In order to accommodate reservations on the code, the CMP is likely to mention the possibility of placing the code for a public debate after the Law Commission fomulates one, the BJP leader held. The partys election manifesto has already promised to ask the commission to formulate such a code.

None would object to a uniform civil code for the country, Jaitley said. After all the Constitution also mentions this. The Samata Party would oppose the BJP on this issue only if there was a talk of imposibg it, she said. The reference to the Law Commission should also be made after consultations with all parties supporting the BJP, she held.

To formulate the CMP, the BJP has started identifying areas of agreement with its allies. Party vice-president KL Sharma pointed out that some of these areas were electoral reforms, women reservation bill, Lok Pal bill, full statehood to Uttarakhand and delimitation of constituencies.

The other areas he said would be identified later. He, however, refused to spell out areas of disagreement.