Pune. NCP (SP) leader Sharad Pawar on Tuesday said the people of Ayodhya have shown how to fix “temple politics” by defeating the BJP candidate there in the recent Lok Sabha elections. Addressing a meeting of traders in Baramati, Pawar highlighted that the BJP had won over 300 seats five years ago but this time its tally has dropped to 240, much short of a majority.
He said, “I thought that Ram Mandir would be an election agenda and the ruling party would get votes, but the people of our country are very intelligent.” Pawar said that when people realized that votes were being sought in the name of the temple, they decided to take a different stand and the BJP had to face defeat. In a major upset in the Faizabad parliamentary constituency, Samajwadi Party candidate Awadhesh Prasad defeated the sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh by a margin of 54,567 votes in the recent elections.
The city of Ayodhya is in the Faizabad parliamentary constituency. The former Union minister said, “We were afraid of the temple being used as an election agenda to seek votes, but the people of Ayodhya showed (by defeating the BJP candidate) how to fix ‘temple politics’.”