Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chose the occasion of Hanuman Janmaotsava, which was celebrated on Saturday, to announce that party president Akhilesh Yadav along with his wife and Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav will visit the Ram Temple in Ayodhya to seek blessings of Ram Lalla on Dec 12.This will be the first visit by Akhilesh or any member of SP’s first family to the temple since its grand Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the deity on Jan 22, 2024.The announcement coming in the runup to the 2027 UP polls has created curiosity in the political circles.“SP chief Akhilesh Yadav Ji along with his family will first visit the Hanumangarhi temple where they will offer prayers and then proceed to the Ram Temple,” SP member Tej Narayan Pandey alias Pawan Pandey confirmed to TOI on phone from Ayodhya.Though SP neither denied nor formally endorsed Pandey’s confirmation, senior functionaries said such statements are made before the media only after due clearance and nod from all ‘required quarters’.“In Hindu mythology we strongly believe that one cannot ‘reach’ Lord Ram unless one seeks blessings of Lord Hanuman. So, we decided to make the announcement of our party president’s visit to the Ram Temple on Hanuman Janmaotsav held on Saturday,” Pawan, who has been a minister in the Akhilesh govt, said. He will accompany the family to Hanumangarhi and then to the Ram Temple.The proposed visit before the UP polls is sure to blunt the BJP’s repeated pointed attacks on SP questioning why the party leadership was reluctant to visit the Ram Temple. “In 2027 UP polls, SP’s political adversaries will not be able to question why he was not visiting the temple. On the contrary, the SP may showcase Akhilesh’s visit to strike a chord with the Hindu majority at large,” said a political observer.Akhilesh has always maintained that he will visit the Ram Temple whenever ‘Lord Ram’ will call him or once the construction of Kedareshwar Dham temple in Etawah was completed – whichever was earlier. The construction of a grand Kedareshwar Temple in Etawah was initiated by Akhilesh Yadav himself.During his visit to Ayodhya recently, Akhilesh had announced that he would visit Ayodhya the day his party leader in Ayodhya Pawan Pandey will ask him to. Not surprisingly, the announcement of Akhilesh’s visit to Ram Temple was made by Pawan Pandey in Ayodhya and not through the routine party sources.Interestingly, Akhilesh had declared Pawan Pandey as the party candidate from Ayodhya for the 2027 polls during his last visit to the temple town. The announcement made Pawan Pandey as first official candidate of SP for the assembly polls with the declaration coming from none other than the party chief himself.In the political circles the development is being seen as a part of SP’s well-crafted move to target the BJP on the issue of donation theft at the Ram Temple in the 2027 polls. If sources are to be believed that SP expects a strong reaction from the BJP on Akhilesh’s proposed visit to Ram temple and the party strategists have prepared themselves to counter BJP’s salvos on the issue, one at a time.The idea behind SP’s preparation to counter BJP’s verbal attacks on the issue is to respond to each of their points logically to silence the political opponents by taking them on while answering media queries or issuing statements backed with facts and figures.For example, the SP strategists expect that the BJP will rake up the issue of 1990 firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya amid the Ram Temple movement when SP govt, then led by Mulayam Singh Yadav, was in place. The party is set to rebut the charge questioning the appointment of former bureaucrats for construction of Ram Temple, who were somehow linked with the firing on Kar Sevaks.
