Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti said on Saturday that the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 was in fact a "failure" of the Ram Temple movement.
"Though the demolition of the disputed structure was a victory for Hindu society, it was a failure on the part of the temple movement leaders like VHP and BJP", she said at a function in Lucknow.
Bharti, who is on a yatra from Karimnagar in Hyderabad to Ayodhya, said the Hindu society believed in sacrifice but found itself in a fix over "aggression".
She recalled that BJP had got an absolute majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in 1991 after the incident of firing on Karsevaks at Ayodhya in 1990.
She said the temple movement leaders had no plan to demolish the disputed structure.
"We had gone there only to offer symbolic kar seva by a handful of sand. Our plan was to form public opinion to exert public pressure after which the then Kalyan Singh government would have resigned, the temple movement would have gained momentum and we would have been able to get support from the whole society", she said.