Bhopal/New Delhi: A day after Union home minister Amit Shah and some other key BJP leaders tested positive for COVID-19, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Monday floated a weird theory linking the spread of the virus to the groundbreaking ceremony for Ram temple in Ayodhya and requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to postpone it, calling August 5 an “inauspicious” day. 

In a series of Twitter posts, Singh said the coronavirus attack on several senior BJP leaders was a consequence of not heeding to “Sanata Dharam” while choosing the “mahurat” (timing) of the groundbreaking ceremony for Ram temple in Ayodhya. 

The “bhumi pujan” of the Ram temple is scheduled to be held on Wednesday and is expected to be attended by the Prime Minister.

"I again request Modiji to postpone the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple on August 5. After a struggle of hundreds of years, the occasion for the construction of the temple has come. Don’t allow your arrogance to create obstruction in the way,” Singh tweeted.

The Rajya Sabha MP further said that Jagat Guru Swami Swaroopanandji Maharaj (Shankaraycharya of Dwarka Peeth) had said that August 5 was an inauspicious muhurat for the ground-breaking ceremony of Ram temple. “For the convenience of Modiji, this inauspicious muhurat was fixed. This means that Modji is above the Hindu beliefs of thousands of years. Is this Hindutava?" he said.

Claiming that some leaders had tested positive for coronavirus as they had ignored the tenets of the Sanatan Dharma, he tweeted, "Modiji, how many more people you want to send to hospital by laying the foundation stone of the Ram temple. Yogiji, advise Modi. In your presence, the tenets of Sanatan Dharma are being broken. What is compelling you to allow all this to happen?”

“In such a situation, shouldn’t the UP CM and PM be in home quarantine? Are the quarantine rules only for the public?” he added.

Apart from Shah, Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit, Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa, UP state BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh, and UP Jal Shakti minister Mahendra Singh tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Chouhan, who tested positive for COVID-19 and is recuperating in a private hospital in Bhopal, countered Singh saying, “The very name of Lord Ram makes inauspicious times auspicious”.

“Congress leaders who were denying the existence of Lord Ram have started commenting on the timing of bhumi pujan for Ram temple. Oh Congressmen, merely invoking the name of Lord Ram turns a time auspicious,” Chouhan tweeted.