Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti on Saturday said that building a Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, was a matter of belief for her and she was ready to go to jail over the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. “Ram temple is a matter of belief for me and I have immense pride in it...If I have to go to jail for it, I will. If I have to hang myself for it, I will,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said after her meeting with UP Chief Minister Adityanath, according to PTI.

She refrained from speaking much on the subject as it was sub-judice, but pointed out that the Supreme Court believed that the dispute could be resolved out of court. Bharti also said that she did not need to discuss the Ayodhya row with Adityanath as neither of them were “strangers to the issue”. “Yogiji’s guru Mahant Avaidnath was the leader of the Ram temple movement,” she added.

On Thursday, the apex court reserved its judgement on a plea seeking to revive the criminal conspiracy charges against Bharti and other senior BJP leaders, including LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, in the Babri Masjid demolition case. The BJP politicians had been acquitted in the case, but the Central Bureau of Investigation has said that they should be tried in the matter as they had been part of a larger conspiracy behind the demolition.

The case:

There are two cases in connection with the Babri mosque demolition – one in Lucknow and the other in Raebareli. The Raebareli court is hearing a case against leaders of the BJP and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, while the other case against karsevaks is pending in a Lucknow trial court. The Supreme Court has suggested clubbing the two.

On December 6, 1992, the mosque was demolished by lakhs of karsevaks, who had gathered at the site from across the country. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.