Some party leaders said they were not sure how the verdict will play out in electoral terms. Congress leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi said the country had moved on since the early nineties when the Sangh Parivar organizations had raised the pitch on the Ayodhya dispute. “It is 2010. It is a modern India. People are aware of the elements trying to cause polarization for narrow political benefits,” Chaturvedi said. He said people had realized the “real face of the mandir-masjid politicians.”
“People had much earlier realized the real face of the mandir-masjid politics. People are fed up with it. Nobody is bothered about such politics,” he said. Chaturvedi, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP, said he had been telling for the last 15 days that “no leaf will fall” in the country after the verdict.
“It was my firm belief that no leaf will fall. We were unnecessarily apprehensive,” he said. Some Congress leaders said privately that they were apprehensive of the BJP.
“In the long term, BJP would use the issue of building a Ram temple,” a senior party leader said.
Though Congress leaders said they do not see the possibility of BJP launching any new movement for a temple, they said the Sangh Parivar organizations may go to the people with their plans to build a grand temple at Ayodhya.
They said the BJP's stand of the disputed structure being the birthplace of Ram had received legal sanction and the party may now also tom-tom Advani's march from Somnath to Ayodhya in 1990.
Congress leaders also feel that the BJP would seek to use the verdict to its advantage in the upcoming Bihar assembly elections. Some are also concerned about the impact of the verdict in Uttar Pradesh where the party has made serious efforts at revival over the past three years.
They said that the next few weeks will indicate if and how the BJP would attempt to gain political capital from the verdict.
Congress leaders said that one or more parties to the dispute will move the Supreme Court but indicated that the party will support any out-of-court settlement between the contesting parties.
