 "Lal Krishna Advani to attend Ram Temple consecration event on Jan 22: VHP")
Ram mandir consecration ceremony: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart Lal Krishna Advani will attend the Ram mandir consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22, Vishva Hindu Parishad president Alok Kumar said on Thursday.
"Advani ji has said that he will come. If required, we will make special arrangements for him," Kumar said.
The development follows less than a month after Ram Temple Trust general secretary Champat Rai, in December, had said that Advani and party leader Murli Manohar Joshi "have been requested to not attend the event" due to their advanced age. "Both are elders of the family and considering their age, they were requested not to come, which was accepted by both," Rai had said on December 19.
About Joshi, Kumar further stated that he has said that "he will also try to come to attend the event".
The two prominent BJP leaders had spearheaded the Ram Temple agitation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Both are founding members of the BJP, too.
Advani had led the 1990 Ram Rath Yatra from Gujarat's Somnath to Ayodhya, demanding the temple. In the Lok Sabha elections that followed next year, the BJP emerged as the second biggest party after the Congress.
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Notably, after Rai's December statement about the duo not going to appear at the ceremony sparked a controversy, Kumar had clarified the next day that both Advani and Joshi had been officially invited to attend the ceremony.
On the Congress party's refusal to attend the ceremony, Kumar said "...Those who want to attend the consecration ceremony can come. Those who do not want to attend the event, it's their wish."
The Congress, on Wednesday, declined the invitation to attend the 'Pran Pratishtha' event, labelling it as a "RSS-BJP event." Congress veteran Sonia Gandhi, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had been extended an invite to the ceremony, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also attend.
(With PTI inputs)