Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi on Tuesday turned down the opposition's demand for suspension of Question Hour to debate the Ayodhya issue, but said the Business Advisory Committee would meet at 1300 IST to decide when it can be taken up for discussion.

The session had begun with angry opposition MPs asking why the government had approached the Supreme Court on the Ayodhya issue without taking the opposition into confidence.

It took the Speaker quite some time to pacify the MPs, who finally agreed to let Question Hour continue as scheduled.

Earlier in the day, Congress president Sonia Gandhi told her party MPs that she favoured a 'status quo' in Ayodhya and waiting for the verdict of the Supreme Court on the issue.

Addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party, she said the apex court had specifically forbidden the 'handing over' of any part of the 67 acres of acquired land to any party before the final settlement of the dispute over the main Ayodhya title deed.

The NDA government's efforts to get the stay on religious activities on the acquired land vacated would be foiled, she added.

The Congress president also accused the Sangh Parivar of using the Indo-Pak tensions to polarise society.

Opposing any action against Iraq without United Nations sanction, Sonia Gandhi said India should take an active part in efforts to defuse the crisis.

The Leader of the Opposition insisted that 'poor governance' was the root cause of the UTI and the stock market scam, which is another issue that the opposition plans to focus on.

"The scams occurred because the NDA government was intent on stoking a bogus 'feel good factor' in the stock market to compensate for its very poor performance. So it deliberately looked the other way as various brokers, banks, corporate entities and UTI took advantage of gaping loopholes in the laws and regulations to keep a wholly artificial boom going," she said.

With inputs from PTI