Lucknow : Union Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma on Tuesday inspected 25 acres of land earmarked for a proposed Ramayan museum in Ayodhya and said the project had nothing to do with Ram Mandir politics ahead of the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
“My visit here is purely as a Tourism Minister and no politics should be attributed to it,” he told the media in Lucknow.The Minister denied the opposition contention that the multi-crore museum project was linked to BJP’s plans to give fresh impetus to the Ram temple movement.
Sharma said while the opposition was blindly pursuing politics on the issue, the BJP was following the path of development. He said the Union government had proposed to establish a Ramayan Circuit to promote tourism and Rs. 225 crore were sanctioned for it.
Opposition parties, including the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, had on Monday accused the central government of remembering Lord Rama for electoral gains only and claimed the museum was a part of a larger conspiracy to communalise the coming assembly polls.
“The decision to build a Ramayan Museum and Ramleela Theme Park in Ayodhya by the BJP and the SP respectively just before the assembly elections shows their intentions,” the BSP chief Mayawati said in a statement on Monday. -IANS
