Senior Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia on Monday resigned from the Gujarat Assembly and the party, citing the party’s decision to decline the invitation for the Ram temple consecration in Ayodhya on January 22, ANI reported.

“Prabhu Ram is not just Pujaniya to Hindus, but he is the Aastha of Bharat,” he said in a letter addressed to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. “Declining the invitation to witness pran pratishtha mahotsav has hurt the sentiments of the people of India. Congress as a party failed to assess the sentiments of the people.”

Modhwadia also accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of creating “ruckus in Assam” on the day of the Ram temple consecration, which he said enraged the party workers and hurt the citizens.

On January 22, Gandhi alleged that the authorities in Assam had prevented him from visiting the Batadrava Satra Temple, the birthplace of 15th-century scholar and reformer Srimanta Sankardeva in Nagaon.

Modhwadia was the Porbandar MLA from 2002 to 2012 and again from 2022. He was also the Congress' Gujarat chief.

On January 10, the Congress said that it would not attend the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya as it was “clearly an RSS-BJP [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party] event”. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Ram temple has been built on the site of the razed Babri mosque on the orders of the Supreme Court. The Babri mosque was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the deity Ram had been born.