New Delhi, July 31: BJP today charged Congress with "attempting to malign the government and the party" on the issue of CBI tapes in the Babri demolition case, and dared it to produce any tape to prove its allegation of Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani's involvement in the incident. "By demanding production of evidence which is not available, Congress is making a political attempt to malign our government and the leadership," party president M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters here.

He said that while Congress had withdrawn many important cases against its leaders during its tenure, "our government decided not to withdraw the cases."
"The Congress will not succeed in its attempts and it would boomerang on them," Naidu said.

Later, party spokesman V K Malhotra said that the tapes were prepared by the CBI during the tenure of P V Narasimha Rao as prime minister.

"Let the Congress produce any tape to prove that Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and other leaders had provoked the kar sewaks to demolish the structure," he said.
Malhotra claimed that even the oral evidence available with CBI substantiated that the leaders were present only to prevent the kar sewaks from demolishing the structure.

Bureau Report