By Faraz Ahmed,

Muzaffarnagar (Uttar Pradesh), March 19 (IANS) In remarks aimed at wooing Muslims, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi declared Monday that the Babri mosque would have been saved if the Gandhis were ruling India when it was razed.

Determined to make up for that one single act that robbed the Congress of its long-standing Muslim support base, the young Gandhi distanced his party from the December 1992 destruction of the 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya.

"Babri Masjid (destruction) would not have happened had any Gandhi family member been there," Rahul Gandhi told reporters while sharing his home-made lunch at a roadside 'dhaba' between Khatauli and Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh.

Touring the state's sprawling sugar belt for the first time as part of the Congress election campaign for the seven-phase assembly election, the son of Congress president Sonia Gandhi said: "My father (former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi) told my mother: 'Were the Babri Masjid to be razed, I will stand there and get killed rather than allow the masjid to fall'."

Elected to parliament for the first time in 2004, Rahul Gandhi refused to accept suggestions that the Congress decline in Uttar Pradesh, a state the party once dominated, was a result of the rise of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Bharatiya Janata Party.

Instead, he said the Congress needed to look within.

"It is primarily due to an organizational weakness of the Congress," he said. "If India has to progress, Uttar Pradesh has to. It cannot go on like this. It is very harmful for Uttar Pradesh. Any respectable politician cannot sit back and watch."

Gandhi set out for his tour three hours late Monday because of the partial solar eclipse, apprehending that religious minded people might not venture out on the streets.

But once he was out on the road, good turnouts greeted him everywhere. The welcome was particularly enthusiastic in Muslim-dominated areas.

He will visit the Darul uloom seminary at Deoband and is likely to interact with residents over tea.

Since Gandhi's entry into western Uttar Pradesh, there appeared to be a perceptible change in the mood of the people towards the Congress.

A sign of this was the presence of Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahendra Singh Tikait's son Rakesh Tikait at a Congress rally in Muzaffarnagar.

The Congress, now an also ran in Uttar Pradesh, is making determined efforts to make its presence felt in such a way that it at least wins a respectable number of seats to play a role in government formation in the event the elections lead to a hung legislature.