राम मंदिर: भाजपा अयोध्या में राम मंदिर के निर्माण को सुगम बनाने के लिए संविधान के दायरे में सभी संभावनाएँ तलाशने की अपनी स्थिति दोहराती है।

The 2014 manifesto puts this under Cultural Heritage and phrases it carefully: "Ram Mandir: BJP reiterates its stand to explore all possibilities within the framework of the constitution to facilitate the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya." Three qualifiers do the work — reiterates, within the framework of the constitution, facilitate. It is not a promise to build a temple by a date; it is a promise about means.

The means turned out to be the Supreme Court. On 9 November 2019 a five-judge bench decided the title suits and, in Part Q of its order, told the government precisely what to do: "The Central Government shall, within a period of three months from the date of this judgment, formulate a scheme pursuant to the powers vested in it under Sections 6 and 7 of the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act 1993. The scheme shall envisage the setting up of a trust with a Board of Trustees or any other appropriate body under Section 6." Among the powers that scheme was to give the trustees, the judgment names "the construction of a temple".

The same order carried a second, simultaneous direction that belongs in any honest account of it: "Simultaneously, with the handing over of the disputed property to the Trust or body under clause 2 above, a suitable plot of land admeasuring 5 acres shall be handed over to the Sunni Central Waqf Board, the plaintiff in Suit 4."

The government complied. The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra trust was constituted in February 2020, inside the three-month window, and possession of the disputed property vested in it. The temple was consecrated on 22 January 2024.

Two points of timing and scope. First, all of this happened in the term after the one in which this particular promise was made — the 2014 manifesto's commitment ran to 2019, and the judgment came in November 2019. The 2019 manifesto repeated the commitment, in stronger words, and that is when delivery occurred. Second, the promise was to facilitate within the constitutional framework rather than to legislate or to build, and that is what the record shows: a court decided the title, a statute already on the books supplied the mechanism, and a trust constituted under it did the construction.

On the promise as written, our verdict is accurate. The construction happened, and it happened through the route the manifesto said the party would use.