NEW DELHI, 3 March 2004 — India’s governing Hindu fundamentalist party said yesterday it will build a temple at the site where a 16th century mosque was destroyed only after reaching an amicable solution with Muslim leaders.

Launching the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign for next month’s national elections, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani told reporters only the BJP is capable of resolving the problem.

The BJP and its more militant allies have used their promise to build a temple at the disputed site as a rallying cry in the past three general elections.

Yesterday, however, Advani toned down the rhetoric, saying the BJP would push for peaceful negotiations with the Muslim community.

Advani said there were three ways to resolve the problem: Through a court verdict, by a Parliament decision, or through an agreement between the Hindu and Muslim communities and their leaders.

“We believe that it is the third approach that will be the most enduring and the most favorable,” he said. But he left no room for the possibility that Muslims could rebuild the mosque. He said at the outset of the election campaign last month that the temple will be built there.

Following discussions held between Hindu and Muslim leaders over the past six months, Advani said the BJP believed a solution to the temple-mosque dispute was “possible and feasible and is going to come about.” He did not specify which Muslim leaders were consulted.

The disputed site is 550 kilometers (340 miles) east of New Delhi and Advani said the town of Ayodhya will be one of the stops on his 7,800-kilometer (4,875-mile) campaign tour by bus across the country.

The tour will be divided into two phases. In the first phase, he will start by bus from Kanyakumari on March 10 and reach Amritsar on March 26. The 77-year-old BJP stalwart will take a four-day break to file his nomination papers and embark on the second phase on March 30 from Porbandar to Puri in Orissa where he will reach by April 20.

While announcing the tour, Advani asserted that Lok Sabha elections were being fought under “inspiring” and “able and capable” leadership of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. This message of Advani carries significance because a few days ago he had commented on BJP’s electoral fight not being a “one-man” (or Vajpayee) show.

Lashing out at the Congress party for its “failure” to lead the country to progress, Advani said that he would propagate the achievements of the BJP-led coalition government in five years as compared to the 50-year rule of Congress.

Through the tour, Advani said, “I want to convey to the people how swaraj (independence) has been converted into suraaj (good governance) over the last five years.” Advani was confident that people would re-elect the NDA government to allow it to complete its unfinished task, that of making India a developed country.

Advani also credited Vajpayee with having shattered the Congress “illusion” that none other than the Nehru family could rule the country.

Apprehensive about the communal impact of Advani’s tour, RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav said in Patna that it aimed at “fomenting communal passions.” “The tour will bring forth BJP’s hidden agenda of Ram temple,” Laloo said. Describing the deputy prime minister as a candidate for premiership, he said that BJP is a “mask” of Sangh Parivar with Advani as the leader.

Meanwhile, political headhunters are working overtime to poach candidates or entire parties ahead of the national elections, with regional groupings expected to emerge as kingmakers.

BJP, which has led a 23-party coalition since 1999, makes no bones that it is out to bolster its strength with new allies.

A string of film celebrities has already made a beeline for the BJP, which is also crowing about a dozen or so senior politicians, including some from the main opposition Congress party, having joined its ranks.

The 119-year-old Congress too is trying to cobble alliances with secular groups in at least three states to counter the BJP when the world’s largest democratic exercise, involving 675 million voters, gets under way.

However, the party, which rules almost half of India’s 28 states but received a drubbing by the BJP in two state elections in December, is so far keeping its cards close to its chest.

And an electronics firm is churning out nearly two dozen electronic voting machines an hour for the elections that will mark the world’s biggest democratic exercise. Electronic voting machines have been used in the country of one billion on an experimental basis since 1998. But the four-phase polls starting April 20 will be the first nationwide elections relying totally on the machines.

These machines are “tamper-proof,” said N.N. Simha, a senior official of state-run Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) in India’s technology hub of Bangalore that must turn out 500,000 of the electronic ballot boxes by March 31. BEL makes radars and electronic warfare equipment for the Indian military and also produces television picture tubes and communication equipment for civilian use.

— Additional input from agencies