New Delhi, Nov 23 (IANS) A senior official of the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry said he was ‘astonished’ at a media report linking Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the 1992 Babri mosque razing.

Anupam Gupta, counsel for the commission that was set up soon after the mosque was demolished in 1992, told NDTV channel that Vajpayee was the only BJP leader who was not connected to the mosque razing and what came to be known as the Ayodhya movement.

‘Of all the top ranking leaders of the Sangh Parivar who were summoned and examined… Vajpayee was not one of them,’ he said.

‘A conscious decision was taken (that) since there is nothing to connect Vajpayee with the demolition proper or with the entire Ayodhya movement, whose culmination the demolition was, the Commission should not call Vajpayee,’ he said.

In such circumstances, Gupta said, he was ‘astonished’ that Vajpayee had been named in the leaked portions of the report published in the Indian Express as one of those ‘indicted’ for the mosque razing.

Gupta said this ‘central fact must be placed before the nation today now that a national newspaper has disclosed certain parts of the report’.