New Delhi: The Centre on June 19 accused the then Kalyan Singh-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh of failing to deploy the stationed central forces to protect the disputed structure at Ayodhya and conceded before the Liberhan Commission that both Union and state governments did not have any contingency plan to meet the eventuality of demolition.

"In such a situation (on December 6, 1992) when all of us agree that it was a sensitive situation, the state government failed in its duty to deploy the stationed central forces," Centre's counsel Lala Ram Gupta told the Commission probing the demolition of disputed structure at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

Maintaining that no contingency plan was prepared either by the state government or the Centre to prevent the frenzied crowd and kar sevaks from reaching the disputed structure, he said, "In my view state government failed in its Constitutional duty so was the Centre."

Both the Centre and state government should have prepared a contingency plan without resorting to firing to protect the disputed structure, the counsel said adding that even if firing was to have been resorted to contingency plan would have been drawn to avoid massacre and bloodbath.

PTI