Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh has made a politically loaded comment that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government cannot fulfill its pledge of constructing the temple in Ayodhya, as it does not have majority in Rajya Sabha, upper house of the Indian Parliament.

During his visit last week to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where BJP won 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats on its own in general elections one year ago, Singh said the central government cannot make any law by bringing in a bill in the Parliament for construction of temple in Ayodhya “this time,” as BJP and its allies put together do not have majority in the Rajya Sabha.

Those who have short memory would laud the home minister for his plain-speak and argue that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the BJP is turning secular. While it is true that Modi has indeed put forward his best foot toward the minorities like Muslims and Christians and assured them no one will be discriminated against on the basis of his religion, it does not mean that the BJP is shedding its pro-Hindu agenda.

The BJP owes its rise to pursuing a strong pro-Hindu agenda and building the temple in Ayodhya is at the core of the party’s political ethos. It is not a coincidence that whenever the BJP is out of power it brings up communal issues like the temple and the need for taking away Jammu and Kashmir’s special status enshrined in Article 370 of the Constitution.

But whenever the BJP comes to power, like it was for six years between 1998 and 2004 under the prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it conveniently shoves these issues under the carpet.

Singh’s above-mentioned remark last Sunday is a manifestation of this policy of the BJP government led by Modi. In fact, none other than Modi himself has gone on record as saying his maiden speech in the Parliament last year that his government would focus only on developmental issues for the first four years and “politics” can take center stage in the fifth and final year of his tenure in 2018-19.

Nothing can be clearer than that. What Modi has said can be decoded in a blunt and simple language like this: We will focus on development agenda for the first four years but will go back to “political” issues (read communally divisive issues like construction of the temple in Ayodhya) in the fifth year of our rule.

So, when the home minister says “BJP does not have a majority in Rajya Sabha, so this time it is not possible to bring a motion in the Parliament to make law for the construction of Ram temple,” he is simply dithering and trying to buy time. Rajya Sabha’s composition is based on the representation of states. The more states a political party has under its rule the more seats it has in the Rajya Sabha.

It is a fact that the BJP has 45 members in the Rajya Sabha and in the House of 243 members the opposition has at least 132 MPs. It is well nigh impossible that it will have the numbers during its current tenure. To make that happen the BJP will have to score a landslide victory in all state assembly polls right up to 2019, a politically impossible task given the fact that the party has no or little base in all eight northeastern states, much of southern India and a big eastern state like West Bengal which sends 42 MPs in the 543-member Lok Sabha.

Moreover, it is highly unlikely that the BJP would have pushed the envelope on the temple issue even if the party were to have a clear majority in the Rajya Sabha as well. The reasons are both political and legal. The political reasons have been explained above. The legal hurdle is that the temple issue is pending before the Supreme Court. No political party can afford to lock horns with the Supreme Court.

Having said that, the BJP is trying to do its best to improve its tally in the Rajya Sabha in two ways: By winning as many state assembly polls as it can; and by forging close relations with regional satraps who occupy a big chunk of seats in Rajya Sabha.

The former is a time consuming process as only one state is due for assembly polls later this year – Bihar. As for the latter, Modi has already charmed his ways to build bridges with his fierce opponent West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and re-engaged with AIADMK supreme leader J. Jayalalithaa who is due to retake the chief ministership of Tamil Nadu after having been cleared of an 18-year-old corruption case by Karnataka High Court. But whatever the shape of political realignments, Singh’s statement of his government’s inability to construct the temple in Ayodhya is nothing but political subterfuge.

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The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist who tweets @Kishkindha