Ravi Shankar Prasad expresses confidence about winning legal battles in Kashi, Mathura

After a long wait and struggle, the Ram temple was being constructed at the disputed site in Ayodhya and people will be able to worship there from January next year, Prasad was quoted as saying in a BJP release.

BJP leader and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday expressed hope that court verdicts in the disputes over religious places in Kashi and Mathura will be in favour of the Hindu petitioners. Prasad was speaking at a rally in Ashok Nagar district of Madhya Pradesh during the Bharatiya Janata Party's ongoing Jan Ashirwad Yatra. The state would be facing assembly elections by the year-end. After a long wait and struggle, the Ram temple was being constructed (at the disputed site) in Ayodhya and people will be able to worship there from January next year, Prasad was quoted as saying in a BJP release. Congress always did politics of appeasement and created obstacles in the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya, he alleged. The BJP, after coming to power, not only constructed temples but also abrogated Article 370 (which granted a special status to Jammu and Kashmir), he said. We are confident that when the court's decisions on Kashi and Mathura issues come, they will be in our favour on the basis of facts and evidence, Prasad was quoted as saying.

He can say this with so much confidence because Sanatan Dharma is thousands of years old and there is evidence of this all over the country and world, the BJP leader added. In Mathura, several petitions have been filed in local courts seeking the shifting of the Shahi Idgah mosque which according to the petitioners has been built at the birthplace of Lord Krishna within the premises of the Katra Keshav Dev temple.

In Kashi (Varanasi), the Hindu side has claimed that the Gyanvapi mosque was built in place of a demolished portion of Kashi Vishwanath temple.