New Delhi, May 27: The Centre today told the Liberhan Commission that BJP associated itself with the Temple Movement in Ayodhya in 1989 and it was only after that its leaders including Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and Union Minister Murli Manohar Joshi came into the picture. "BJP got itself associated with the Ayodhya movement in June 1989 when the party at its national executive committee meeting in Palampur resolved to support the movement," Centre's counsel Lala Ram Gupta told the commission, probing the demolition of disputed structure at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. He said prior to that Advani and Joshi had no association with the movement.

The counsel said till 1984, it had not taken the shape of a mass movement and it was only when the threat to break open the lock of the disputed structure was given in the same year, it started assuming the character of public movement and subsequently an application to unlock it was filed in the court in January 1986.

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The court's order to open the lock of the disputed structure was delivered on Februaray 1, he said.

"Thus the genesis of its (temple movement) becoming the mass movement started in 1984 and it developed and became a mass movement when threat to open the lock was given in 1984 and in February 1986, the locks were opened,' the Centre contended. When the Commission asked whether Ayodhya movement was religious or political movement, the Centre's counsel termed it as a "multi-dimensional" movement.

After this submission, the commission asked the Centre's counsel to clarify this question in writing and adjourned the hearing.
Bureau Report