The Babri masjid demolition has ceased to be the issue it was in the mid-1990s.

The Cobrapost sting operation brings to the forefront a story that has been debated endlessly since 6 December 1992, specifically whether the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was elaborately planned by the various wings of the Sangh parivar and executed with precision by trained volunteers.

It's a conspiracy theory that the Sangh Parivar and BJP has been denying since the time of the demolition and construction of a make shift Ram temple. Their claim is that this was a spontaneous act of the thousands of kar sevaks present at the site and was the principal issue examined by the Liberhan Commission’s 17-year-long inquiry commissioned by the Union Government.

Interestingly, it was widely believed that Justice (retd) MS Liberhan had finished the probe and come out with his findings just before the 2009 parliamentary elections were to take place, but the UPA-I government thought it prudent not to have the report submitted to it. The last election was between LK Advani and Manmohan Singh. The Congress was still talking about the aam aadmi agenda and the middle class was worried about the situation due to the economic crisis.

In 2009 the Congress appeared to be a clear front runner on substantive issues, and didn’t want to get the electioneering vitiated by the Ayodhya issue that could potentially polarise voters. After all, LK Advani was a key protagonist of Ayodhya movement. The Librehan report was submitted to the UPA-II Manmohan Singh government in June 2009, and five months later in November the contents of the report were made official.

Cobrapost chief Aniruddha Bahal’s release of video and analytical transcript of the sting, appropriately codenamed 'Operation Janambhoomi', has resulted in the BJP crying foul. The party says that the sting operation goes on to repeat something that has been debated in the media and even sustained judicial scrutiny at varied levels. What is new is that the various interviews with some Sangh Parivar activists been done with a hidden camera, giving it an aura of sensationalism. The timing of it, coming just ahead of the first phase of elections and around the time the Congress leadership is going all out to make these elections about secularism, gives it an additional newsworthiness.

BJP Vice president Muktar Abbas Naqvi has declared it a "Congress sponsored sting operation aimed to polarise votes".

Party MP and convener of the BJP's national election cell, R Ramakrishna, in his petition to the Election Commission wrote, "This appears to be a politically motivated and meticulously planned operation to polarise the ongoing elections. The Cobrapost investigation being planned at this time is a diabolic move to create a communal flare up and cause widespread impact of a dimension that can challenge even the basic structure of the Election Commission of India to conduct free and fair Lok Sabha Election.”

The Election Commission, however, did not respond and did not find it an appropriate case to issue prohibitory orders restraining Cobrapost from holding the press conference or releasing the video.

However, despite the lack of action from the Election Commission, the BJP isn't worried. Primarily the party believes that the Ayodhya masjid demolition is a political dead horse for all concerned. The matter is also already under consideration in courts, so the issue is only about whether the issue becomes one of public debate issue in the nine-phase parliamentary elections. Whether Congress or other self-proclaimed "secular" parties will follow up on the Cobrapost operation is not known at the moment.

After the 1998 parliamentary elections, the Babri Masjid demolition ceased to be an issue that could bring political dividends to the BJP. The party did not do that well in 1999 elections in UP. The Congress was taken as co-accused by many in the minority community and Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party emerged as a protector of the Muslim cause.

Even the Allahabad High Court’s judgement failed to arouse sentiments from either side of social divide. Twenty-two years after the demolition of the Babri masjid, it is doubtful whether Cobrapost’s story will have any relevance for the public and in political discourse. The annual 6 December rituals in Parliament have also lost their vigour over the last few years. The burning issue of early and mid-90s has hardly any relevance in 2014. At least not until some new revelation or twist catches the fancy of people.

This election is so Modi-centric that only issues related to him have featured in popular discourse. There is an attempt by the Congress and some others like the JD(U), SP, BSP to make the 2002 riots of Gujarat an issue against Modi. Even lately there have been charges and counter changes between Sonia Gandhi and Modi but a polarisation on communal lines hasn't taken place till now.

Cobrapost's own Snoopgate sting, done in collaboration with Ashish Khetan, now the Aam Admi Party’s New Delhi parliamentary constituency candidate, didn’t become an election issue. The Centre’s proposed commission of inquiry over the issue couldn’t take off because no judge serving or retire was willing to associate with a probe of this kind, BJP leader Arun Jaitley has claimed.