Rahul Gandhi said Congress govt would ’overturn Ram Mandir decision’: Pramod Krishnam makes BIG claim

Former Congress leader Acharya Pramod Krishnam on Monday claimed that Congress MP Rahul Gandhi had once said if the Congress government was formed at the Centre, "we will form a superpower commission and will overturn the Ram Mandir verdict". Krishnam was expelled by the Congress for "indiscipline" in February 2024.

"I have spent more than 32 years in the Congress and when the Ram Mandir decision came, Rahul Gandhi in a meeting with his close aides said that after the Congress government is formed, they will form a superpower commission and overturn the Ram Mandir decision," Krishnam told news agency ANI.

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Krishnam further claimed that Rahul Gandhi “had then also said that he will overturn the Ram Mandir decision just like Rajiv Gandhi overturned the Shah Bano decision...”

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had attacked the Congress while referring to the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to overturn the Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Bano case in 1985.

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The 1984 Shah Bano case

In April 1978, Shah Bano had filed a petition before a court in Indore, demanding maintenance from her divorced husband Mohammed Ahmad Khan, a well-known lawyer.

Shah Bano had approached the court, not under the Muslim Personal Law, but under Section 123 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 – which provided that a man will have to provide for his wife during the marriage and after divorce if she cannot sustain herself financially on her own.

In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Shah Bano. However, the then Congress government under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had overturned the judgement through an Act.

According to a report in the Frontline Magazine, the Supreme Court of India upheld the decision of the high court that ordered the payment of maintenance to Shah Bano in April 1985.  The judgement had set a political battle.

The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was reportedly “caught between the protesting Muslim clergy, who were backed by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, and the Hindu right-wing that had leapt on the verdict to push for a uniform civil code."

The Rajiv Gandhi government had passed the Muslim Women (Protection on Divorce) Act, 1986, overturning the Supreme Court verdict.