VHP yatra: Ayodhya turns into fortress, former BJP MP among 350 arrested

Ayodhya: At 7 this morning, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Ram Vilas Vedanti, a former BJP member of Parliament, from the banks of the river Saryu in Ayodhya. He is among almost 350 people now in preventive custody as the Akhilesh Yadav government tries to thwart every move by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to hold a 300-km-long parikrama or religious procession around Ayodhya.

Mr Vedanti, who had threatened to lead the 84 kos parikrama that the state government has banned, had been sitting on the river banks from 3 am and was spotted when he got up to remove a saffron cloth he had wrapped around him. The police drove him away in a blue bolero jeep.

More khaki than saffron dots Ayodhya this morning, with about 8000 policeman deployed in the town and its twin, Faizabad, 10 km away. All access has been cut off to the Saryu ghats, where the VHP has threatened to begin the yatra with a puja at this morning.

Many of the VHP's top leaders have already been arrested, but there is much speculation that others are hiding in Ayodhya waiting to spring a surprise. There are even rumours that hardliners like Praveen Togadia from Gujarat are already in town. VHP chief Ashok Singhal is expected to leave Delhi for Lucknow soon.

The Sangh Parivar - the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates like the BJP and the VHP - calculates that Sunday's developments could set the tone for general elections 2014. But the yatra, which is aimed at mobilising support for a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992, has not found support from one of the top priests of Ayodhya.

Acharya Satyendra Das who takes care of the makeshift Ram temple here has slammed the yatra as "political, not religious" and says many others do not support it. (Hindu religious leaders divided, Ayodhya priest slams VHP)

But the VHP insists it is a religious yatra and has accused Mulayam Singh Yadav, who heads the ruling Samajwadi Party, of "stopping one community from worshiping, to please another community." The six districts that the yatra would travel through have a sizeable Muslim population, a crucial vote bank for the Samajwadi Party.

The BJP has accused the Uttar Pradesh government for being "over-prepared" for a procession that, it claims, is to be performed by "just 250 saints".