Duration and Expenses
The one-man panel, one of the country's longest running inquiry commissions, cost the government Rs.8 crore (80 million rupees), and wrote the report on the sequence of events leading to the destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu mobs on 6 December 1992 and the other issues mentioned in the terms of reference.
Appointed by former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao two weeks after the demolition on 6 December 1992, to ward off criticism against his government for having failed to protect the mosque, the commission in August 2005 finished hearing its last witness Kalyan Singh – who was Uttar Pradesh chief minister at the time of the demolition and was dismissed soon after.
In 16 years of its proceedings, the commission recorded statements of several politicians, bureaucrats and police officials including Kalyan Singh, late Narasimha Rao, former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani and his colleagues Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati as well as Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Top bureaucrats and police officials of Uttar Pradesh, the then district magistrate R.N. Srivastava and Senior Superintendent of Police D.B. Roy of Ayodhya also recorded their statements on the demolition. In all, the Commission examined one hundred witnesses including
- Mark Tully, BBC Journalist
- PR Kumaramangalam, Union Minister
- SB Chavan, Union Home Minister
- Uma Bharti, BJP leader
- KS Sudarshan, RSS leader
- Jyoti Basu, CPI(M) leader, member of the National Integration Council
- Murli Manohar Joshi, President, Bharatiya Janta Party, member of the Rajya Sabha
- LK Advani, Leader, Bharatiya Janta Party
- Vinay Katyar, Member of Parliament, Bharatiya Janta Party
- Vishnu Hari Dalmia, President, Vishwa Hindu Parishad
- VP Singh, Former Prime Minister, leader of Janta Dal
- Kalyan Singh, the then Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh
- PV Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India
- Tej Shankar, Supreme Court's observer in Ayodhya
- Arjun Singh, Union Cabinet Minister, Union Human Resource and Development
- Swami Sachidanand Sakshi, alias Sakshiji Maharaj, BJP Member of Parliament, Acharya of the Nirmal Panchayati Akhara, Haridwar
- Ashok Singhal, Leader, Vishwa Hindu Parishad
- Kalraj Mishra, President, Uttar Pradesh unit of Bharatiya Janta Party
- Mahant Paramhans Ramchander Das, President, Ram Janambhoomi Nyas
- Mulayam Singh Yadav, Former Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh
- Madhav Godbole, Union Home Secretary
Four years ago, the hearings of the Commission concluded but not before a controversy broke out with the sole Commission's Counsel Anupam Gupta dissociating himself from it owing to personal differences with Justice Liberhan. Advani, Joshi, Bharti and Kalyan Singh, who was the BJP Chief Minister at the time of demolition, appeared before the Commission as witnesses. Kalyan Singh appeared only after the Delhi High Court lifted a stay order on his deposition.
Others against whom criminal cases are pending in the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya included VHP leader Ashok Singhal and Bajrang Dal's Vinay Katiyar.
Even before the findings of the Commission were out, Congress and BJP leaders clashed over the issue.
Read more about this topic: Liberhan Commission
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