For the Central Reserve Police Force, the road to the Bengal elections lay through Ayodhya on Sunday morning.

A CRPF contingent headed from Jammu and Kashmir to Bengal and Assam for election duty made a 280km detour to Ayodhya, with over 200 personnel in uniform praying at the Ram temple.

A sadhu in Ayodhya said he understood that the visit was an impromptu decision by the officers leading the team.

The temple turn evoked mixed reactions. A former chief election commissioner questioned the optics of such a visit on the ground that those on poll duty must also be “visibly impartial”. A retired IPS officer who once headed the BSF, however, said there was nothing wrong in it, given the Ram temple’s significance and newness — it was consecrated just two
years ago.

Local sources said there was a commotion in Ayodhya when people noticed over 50 armoured vehicles parked on roadsides near the temple.

“Initially, we thought something extraordinary had happened in or around the temple. Later, we heard from people living nearby that over 200 CRPF men in uniform had entered the temple in a queue. They carried no weapons,” a local journalist, who didn’t want to be named, said.

“Some members of the temple management committee accompanied them inside from the gate. Ordinary devotees were stopped outside for about an hour.”

The CRPF personnel didn’t talk to the media. A local sadhu was quoted as saying that from the Ram temple, the jawans went to the Hanuman Garhi temple.

“What I understood was that the jawans didn’t know that they would be taken to Ayodhya,” the sadhu said.

“They came from Jammu and Kashmir via the New Delhi-Lucknow Expressway and were supposed to move to Kanpur before taking the Grand Trunk Road to Bengal. Their officers decided to take them to the Ram temple and informed the temple administration.”

Former chief election commissioner O.P. Rawat told The Telegraph: “Personnel on poll duty should not only be fair and impartial, they must also be visible as fair and impartial. This visit affects the visibility of their impartiality.”

However, retired IPS officer Prakash Singh, who served as the DGP of the BSF and in the Uttar Pradesh and Assam police departments, did not see any problem with the visit.

“This is a new structure, and Hindus everywhere want to visit it. If the convoy is passing by, why should the personnel not avail themselves of the opportunity? There is no reason to believe that this would affect their impartiality. In fact, by going to a temple, these men would be less likely to do any hanky-panky during their deployment,” he told this newspaper.

Soon after the CRPF left, 30 tea garden workers from Dibrugarh in Assam, including 25 women, arrived at the Ram temple and were welcomed by members of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Dibrugarh on April 1 to campaign and spent some time with us. He invited us to visit the Ram temple in Ayodhya and Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi,” said Dilip Kumar, who works at the Manohari tea garden in Dibrugarh.

“Then some BJP people, who had been assigned to organise our trip, brought us to Ayodhya.”

Trust general secretary Champat Rai said: “The Prime Minister had asked these people during his visit whether they had ever stepped out of Assam and they had answered ‘No’.”

Meena Teeti, a woman tea garden worker, said: “We felt great after seeing the Ram temple and praying there. They will take us to Varanasi from here.”

Assembly elections will be held on April 9 in Assam, and on April 23 and 29 in Bengal.