New Delhi:
The Narasimha Rao government should have dismissed the UP government after the Babri Masjid demolition, says Minister of Corporate and Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid.
"Tough decisions have to be made sometimes," Khurshid told NDTV.
"Some minority ministers wanted to resign. I was also expected to resign. We're sorry we couldn't prevent the demolition," he said.
Khurshid's comments have come in the wake of the uproar over the leakage of the Liberhan Commission's report on the Babri Masjid demolition.
A day after the leakage of the findings set off a political storm, the government today decided to table the report in Parliament.
A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the absence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is away in the United States.
The Liberhan Report, which examines who was responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, describes it as "a tailor-made exercise", fuelled and then executed with the complete knowledge of the BJP - and "one of the most abhorrent acts in the history of the nation."
The report is especially severe in its criticism of then UP chief minister Kalyan Singh, accusing him of forcing his administration into "ineffectiveness", and refusing paramilitary forces from the Centre till after the demolition.