NEW DELHI: With the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam insisting on building the Sethusamudram channel project in its current alignment, the Bharatiya Janata Party laid the blame at the door of the United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre. At a press conference here on Wednesday, BJP deputy leader in the Lok Sabha V.K. Malhotra said that Mughal emperor Babar sent his general Mir Baqi to destroy the ancient Ram temple at Ayodhya. Now, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he alleged, was using the DMK to destroy Ram Sethu, the "ancient bridge Lord Ram and Hanuman built to cross into Lanka."

Mr. Malhotra admitted that the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance Government had cleared the Sethusamudram project. But at that time the alignment was different; it would not have destroyed the solid rocks under the ocean which, BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi had said, were the remains of "the Ram Sethu bridge constructed by brilliant engineers" thousands of years ago during the Ramayana period. "This is the belief of millions of people. No evidence is needed for faith," Mr. Malhotra claimed.While he agreed that the DMK was a partner in the NDA Government, he said, "at that time the DMK was not doing all this;" it did not then insist on an alignment that would destroy Ram Sethu.

Asked whether the BJP's criticism of the DMK on this issue was part of its political project of coming closer to the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam again, Mr. Malhotra said: "For any two political parties to come together as allies, both sides have to agree."

He criticised the attack on the office of the Tamil daily Dinakaran in Madurai in which three persons were killed.

"This is the result of a factional feud within the DMK. If this kind of violence is witnessed as a result of inner-party rivalry, what would the DMK cadre do to political rivals?"

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