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Vajpayee has vindicated me on Ayodhya: V P Singh

Former prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh claims he has scored a ''moral victory'' over Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the Ayodhya issue.

Singh said Vajpayee has used exactly the same sentence he did in 1990 to dissuade the Vishwa Hindu Parishad from building a Ram temple at the disputed site where the demolished Babri Mosque had stood.

The former prime minister, who made these remarks during an interview on the 'India Talks' programme to be broadcast on the CNBC Asia television channel, said he had told Vajpayee and senior BJP leader Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, ''when you sit on this chair, you will say exactly what I am saying.''

He said: ''The whole dialogue and the discussions [on the disputed site in Ayodhya] were between me and the BJP. And I remember that very time [in 1990] when they came, they said. 'Why don't you allow us to put just five bricks?' I said that it is not a question of putting five bricks but whether the authority and justice of the republic should be upheld and the court's order should be respected.''

He continued: ''And I said that I'm offering land just besides it [the disputed site]. You start the work there, I will myself come for kar seva '. This is not against building the Ram mandir. But just when the court has said no, the status-quo has to be respected.''

UNI

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