NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the party and not former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking of Babri Masjid gates and asserted that the “BJP-planted” Arun Nehru was behind it.

Aiyar also said his guess is that had Gandhi been alive and been the prime minister instead of P V Narasimha Rao, Babri Masjid would still be standing, the BJP would have been given an appropriate riposte and he would have found a solution similar to the one that the Supreme Court arrived at years later.

He hailed the Congress top brass’ decision to decline the invitation for the January 22 Ram temple consecration ceremony.

Aiyar was speaking on Friday at the launch of his book “The Rajiv I Knew And Why He Was India’s Most Misunderstood Prime Minister”, published by Juggernaut.

“He (Gandhi) was saying keep the masjid and build the temple. The Supreme Court said make the temple and make the masjid somewhere else. In a sense, the judgement is the same as the conclusion Rajiv was coming towards,” Aiyar said.

During a free-wheeling chat with senior journalist Vir Sanghvi, the Congress leader said the BJP of Atal Bihari Vajpayee was “stolen” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

After the NDA lost, there were 10 years of Congress rule. “At the end of that Congress rule, things were really going bad, we had a prime minister who was not able to take decisions and the result was that into that vacuum stepped the BJP of Modi,” Aiyar said.

Aiyar’s book talks about Gandhi’s premiership (October 31, 1984-December 2, 1989) as seen by him while working closely with the late Congress president in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Controversies such as the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi issue, the Shah Bano case, the India-Sri Lanka (Rajiv-Jayawardene) Accord and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) have been dealt with in detail in the book.

With the Ram temple consecration ceremony days away, much of the focus of Aiyar’s conversation with Sanghvi remained on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.

Asked about the opening of locks on the Babri Masjid gates in 1986, Aiyar said the fact of the matter is that with a majority of 400 seats in Parliament, Gandhi had no reason to either appease Muslims or encourage the Hindu sentiment.

Asserting that it was Arun Nehru who was behind the opening of the locks, Aiyar said since Arun Nehru studied in a Lucknow school, the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, which was a local issue at that time, was very much on his mind.

“So, he used his power within the party to get an unknown man, Veer Bahadur Singh, elected as the chief minister and as I described in the book, the first thing Singh did was to go to Ayodhya and meet Deoki Nandan Agarwal (of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and others. (He) obtained from them a petition which said locks had not been put (on the gates of Babri Masjid) by judicial order but by executive order,” the Congress leader said.

Thereafter, when the matter came up before the district sessions judge of Faizabad on 1 February 1986, the district magistrate and senior superintendent of police affirmed that the locks were not necessary for preserving public peace and law and order, he said.

“The locks were opened and a huge number of Hindu pilgrims, who had been gathered purposely, surged in and Rajiv knew nothing about it. So, yes there was a Congress hand in the opening of the locks but that Congress person knew that Rajiv Gandhi would never have allowed the opening of those locks, cancelling the executive order and that is why he kept it from Rajiv,” Aiyar claimed.

The end of the story is that Arun Nehru joined the BJP and so he was a “BJP plant”, he said.

On Gandhi allowing ‘shilanyas’ of a new Ram temple, Aiyar said the former prime minister took the advice that he needed political expertise and with that came into the PMO a “nexus” between Congress leaders M L Fotedar and R K Dhawan.

Dhawan told Gandhi that he should pander to the Hindu sentiment but he resisted that, Aiyar said.

Asked what would have been the state of the country had Gandhi lived on and become the prime minister instead of Rao, Aiyar said he could only guess and couldn’t say for sure.

“My own guess is that the Babri Majid issue which he had discussed with (former Union minister) Siddharth Shankar Ray and others would have been referred to the Supreme Court under Article 142 and the question the Supreme Court would have been asked — ‘Was a temple demolished by Mir Baqi to build a mosque?’,” he said.

Aiyar asserted that Gandhi would not have negotiated with the BJP the way Rao did as the prime minister and would have been very proactive.

“He (Gandhi) could have easily declared President’s rule the minute these people climbed the dome and used the 125 companies … who were waiting outside Ayodhya to enter the premises and clear it of these people who destroyed the mosque. I don’t think kar sevaks would have been allowed into Ayodhya,” he said.

Asked whether it was fair to say that the Congress made the mistakes of opening the locks and negotiating with L K Advani, things that the BJP took advantage of, Aiyar said, “You are absolutely right that the Congress did all this but I am also right — who in the Congress?”

“My sole point is that the only person not involved in all this, except for the ‘shilaniyas’ in the middle of the election, was Rajiv. He did not open the locks, he did not negotiate with the BJP and did not go dumb when the domes were being knocked down. Rajiv is not to be blamed but the Congress is to be blamed,” he stressed.

The Rahul Gandhi-led ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, on Thursday entered Assam through Haluwating in Sivasagar district from Nagaland.

Gandhi resumed his journey in a bus from Tuli in Nagaland in the early morning and reached Assam around 9:45 am. He was received by hundreds of party workers at Haluwating, where the national flag was handed over to Assam Congress leaders for the eight-day journey in the state.

The 6,713-km-long march, led by the Congress MP, commenced from Manipur on January 14 and will culminate on March 20 in Mumbai. The Assam leg of the march will continue till January 25.

The ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ is planned to cover 110 districts in 15 states.

NEW DELHI: Three convicts in the case of gangrape of Bilkis Bano and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 riots in Gujarat moved the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking extension of time to surrender. One of the convicts had on Wednesday sought extension of four weeks, beyond January 22, to surrender to the jail authorities.

The other two convicts are Ramesh Rupabhai Chandana and Mitesh Chimanlal Bhat.

The top court on January 8 had quashed the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to 11 convicts in the case, saying the orders were “stereotyped” and passed without application of mind. It had asked the convicts to surrender before jail authorities in two weeks.

The matter seeking extension of time was mentioned before a bench of Justices B V Nagarathana and Sanjay Karol on Thursday. The bench then issued directions to the Registry to seek orders from CJI DY Chandrachud for reconstitution of the bench tomorrow (Jan 19) to take up the applications.

“It is stated by three respondents that applications have been filed for an extension of time to surrender and report to jail. Since the bench has to be reconstituted, registry to seek orders from CJI for reconstitution of the bench since time expires on Sunday (Jan 21),” the bench said

Convict Govindbhai Nai, in his application filed before the Supreme Court, had stated that he is the only caregiver for his ailing 88-year-old father, who is bedridden and completely dependent on him. He stated that his father is an elderly man suffering from asthma and in poor health and that he recently underwent surgery, including an angiography, and is scheduled for another operation for the treatment of hemorrhoids. He also mentioned that his mother is 75 years of age and also in poor health. Nai also said that he also a father of 2 children who are completely dependent on him for their financial and other needs.

Khurma had to borrow her neighbour’s shoes to walk to Pul-e Alam city to collect a cash handout being given to the growing number of vulnerable Afghans who are struggling to survive the winter.

The 45-year-old widow waited in her threadbare blue burqa to receive 3,200 Afghanis ($45) from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the eastern Afghan city, where temperatures can drop well below freezing.

“We are desperate,” the mother-of-six told AFP. “When we can’t find any bread, we go to bed on an empty stomach.”

She is one of millions facing months of hunger and cold, with natural disasters and displacement putting more Afghans at risk even as funding to one of the world’s poorest countries — wracked by decades of war — has plummeted.

“Things were already quite catastrophic” in Afghanistan, said Caroline Gluck, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “But as winter starts we have two massive emergencies.”

Thousands of people are still sleeping in tents in Herat province after successive earthquakes in October destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 31,000 homes.

And around half a million Afghans fleeing deportation from Pakistan have returned in recent months to a country where unemployment is rife, “at the worst possible time of the year”, Gluck said.

Rabbani, 32, is one of them.

As a refugee, he is entitled to WFP aid: 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of flour, six kilograms of red beans, five litres of oil and 450 grams of salt.

But, “there is no work here”, he said.

When freezing temperatures set in, his family of seven abandoned the tent they had occupied since crossing from Pakistan for a shack.

“When there is nothing left to eat, death is better than begging.”

Food emergency

Shakar Gul, 67, had just received the first of six monthly payments of 3,200 Afghanis from the WFP.

“If we adults don’t have enough to eat for several days, that’s okay… but we don’t let our children die of hunger,” she said.

With the money she will be able to buy household essentials — but only enough for 15 days.

This year, there is less assistance, due in part to a spike in humanitarian emergencies around the world and donor fatigue.

“Excluded people still come here and wait, especially women,” said Baryalai Hakimi, director of the WFP’s Pul-e Alam centre. “They are upset. We explain to them that the people who get help are more vulnerable than they are.”

Such is the case for Bibi Raihana. Aged 40, she has eight children, a husband in prison, health problems and “not a single Afghani”.

Her eyes were wet with tears behind the mesh of her burqa.

“My name wasn’t on the lists. They didn’t give me anything,” she said.

This winter, 15.8 million Afghans need assistance, with 2.8 million at an emergency level of food insecurity, said Philippe Kropf, spokesperson for WFP, which provides 90 percent of food aid in Afghanistan.

Funding shortages have forced WFP to tighten the criteria for aid handouts, with just six million people eligible for emergency assistance in food, cash or vouchers, Kropf added.

“It leaves a gap of 10 million people.”

Once flush with humanitarian aid following the US-led invasion of the country, funding to Afghanistan has plummeted since the Taliban returned to power in mid-2021, in part over the many restrictions imposed on women.

Today, approximately 85 percent of Afghans live on less than $1 a day, according to the UN, with extreme poverty found in both rural and urban areas.

The poorest are left with distressing choices: fall into debt, take their kids out of school to work in the streets, or marry off young daughters to lessen household expenses.

‘Only God’

In a desert an hour’s drive from Pul-e Alam, WFP distributed essentials in the Baraki Barak district.

Hunched in the back of a three-wheeled flatbed, 77-year-old Zulfiqar said his family sometimes goes hungry for days.

“When we have nothing left to eat, we just wrap ourselves in our shawls and sleep,” he said.

In the poverty-stricken Kabul suburbs, thousands of returnees from Pakistan have sought aid.

The Taliban authorities provided assistance at the border to the returnees, but government welfare programs are very limited.

Depending on eligibility, UNHCR distributes a maximum of $375 per person, sometimes much less.

Najiba arrived in Afghanistan two months ago with her husband and three children.

All five sleep on the floor in a room in her brother’s house.

“We fill cans with hot water to keep warm, we don’t have any wood,” she said, rocking her youngest child in the courtyard. Her other children were barefoot nearby, despite the cold.

Benazira’s fate is just as uncertain: at 34, she has eight daughters, a son and a sick husband.

Clutching the money she had just received from UNHCR, she asked for help counting the crisp, unfamiliar US dollars — $340, enough to survive three weeks.

“Only God is with us,” she said, before setting off on the hours-long journey to Nangarhar province, where her family sleeps in a brickyard.