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Ayodhya crisis may have cost
the nation Rs 800 million

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The fortnight-long Ayodhya crisis cost the nation at least Rs 800 million, a senior government official indicated on Tuesday.

From the time the Vishwa Hindu Parishad made public its plans to conduct the bhumi pujan on the acquired land adjacent to the disputed site in Ayodhya, the government had been trying to prevent a crisis.

Attempts to bring the two warring parties -- the Muslim leaders and the VHP top brass -- to the negotiating table had begun a couple of months back, though these endeavours became more visible only a couple of weeks before the date of the bhumi pujan -- March 15.

A new urgency to the negotiations was imparted, of course, by the riots in Gujarat that claimed over 600 lives.

"From March 1 onwards, the (Union) government took genuine cognizance of the threat emanating from the VHP. It upgraded the security in Ayodhya, sought the intervention of eminent personalities and set into motion a process of negotiation with the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati at its head. All this cost money and conservative estimates have put the cost of averting a crisis in Ayodhya at around Rs 800 million," a secretary-level official of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs told rediff.com.

Not willing to take any chances, the Central government, he said, had pressed into service 92 companies of para-military forces in Ayodhya -- that is around 10,000 men.

"If one calculates the cost of deployment of 10,000 armed securitymen for a fortnight, that itself works out to around Rs 800 million. The jawans need to be fed, they need to be provided lodging and boarding, logistics like their transportation need to be taken care of. All this costs a huge amount of money. And mind you, we haven't yet begun talking of the government staff involved and man-hours spent on managing the crisis," he said.

The official said the Ayodhya crisis had paralysed the government machinery. "Nothing moved in the corridors of power that fortnight. "Cost of all this can't be calculated easily, but believe me if somebody made the effort, he would arrive at a figure certainly shocking," said another official.

The Ayodhya Issue: Complete Coverage

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