india

Updated: Nov 09, 2019 20:13 IST

Among many others, it was a moment of accomplishment also for senior Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday as the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in the Ayodhya land title dispute.

The ruling by a five-judge constitution bench of the top court on Saturday held unanimously that a Ram temple would be built at the 2.77-acre piece of land in Ayodhya and ordered the government to give Muslims an alternative five-acre plot in a prominent place in the ancient city in Uttar Pradesh.

“It is an extraordinary and historic judgement. The most important thing is that it reinforces all the values of a united India,” Prasad said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lok Sabha lawmaker from Bihar’s Patna Sahib has been the counsel for the deity Ram Lalla Virajman in Allahabad High Court and his unrelenting arguments before it led to the determination of the title in favour of the child deity in 2010.

The noted lawyer has been a part of almost every campaign of the BJP in favour of a ram temple and played a crucial role in organising the Ram Rath Yatra of veteran BJP leader LK Advani in 1990.

Prasad is now the minister for law, communication and electronic and information technology in the Narendra Modi government.

Much of his arguments before Allahabad High Court laid the foundation of the top court’s judgement on Saturday, which paved the way for building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya.

It was a promise that the BJP first made in its national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh’s Palampur in June 1989.

The Allahabad High Court had given one-third of the land to the deity, something which the Supreme Court too upheld.

After the matter came to Supreme Court, Prasad guided lawyers in the filing of the appeals.

Throughout, he remained an important link between the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the petitioners, all of whom relied on his arguments before the Allahabad high court to build a case before the Supreme Court.