Describing L.K. Advani as the Bhishm Pitamah of the NDA, the Congress has voiced hope that the leader, who on Saturday marked the anniversary of his controversial 1990 rath yatra to Ayodhya, or the BJP will not do anything that impacts the country's secularism or "reopens old wounds".
"L.K. Advani is the Bhishm Pitamah (patriarch) of National Democratic Alliance (NDA).... With wisdom of hindsight, I do hope that neither Advani nor his party (BJP) does anything which impacts India's pluralism and secularism or in any manner reopens any of the old wounds which have taken a long time to heal," party spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters here on Saturday.
He said 20 years ago during these very months, Advani endeavoured to lead a yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya. "The implications of that yatra, the communal conflagration it unleashed, the wounds it opened.... The nation has barely been able to surmount it," he said.
Earlier, Mr Advani offered prayers at the Shiva temple in Somnath (Gujarat) from where he took out his rath yatra to Ayodhya 20 years ago. The veteran leader visits Somnath every year since he took out a yatra from here to Ayodhya on September 25, 1990.
Accompanied by Hindutva leader Uma Bharti, Advani said, "I am not able to understand the decision of the Supreme Court" which had imposed an interim stay on the pronouncement of the verdict in the Ayodhya title suits by the Allahabad high court.
The Supreme Court had on Thursday deferred the verdict by a week and decided to hear the plea for postponement on September 28.