1991 Act not violated: HC on Gyanvapi pleas

A bouquet of pleas filed by Hindu petitioners seeking worshipping rights inside the Gyanvapi Masjid complex and the removal of the mosque is not barred by the 1991 Places of Worship Act, the Allahabad high court ruled on Tuesday, marking a crucial turn in the decades-old dispute that will have reverberations across a raft of similarly sensitive cases.

- Jitendra Sarin

The high court’s decision to dismiss pleas by the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee (AIMC), which manages the 17th-century Gyanvapi mosque, and the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board (UPSCWB), also signifies a setback for Muslim petitioners who have thus far relied, unsuccessfully, on the 1991 law that was meant to forestall religious disputes on the lines of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid suit.

A single-judge bench of justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal also asked lower courts to hear the dispute expeditiously and reach a decision within six months while vacating all interim stays in the matter.

“The dispute raised in the suit is of vital national importance. It is not a suit between the two individual parties. It affects two major communities of the country,” said the judge in the 63-page order.

“Due to the interim order operating since 1998, the suit could not proceed. In the national interest, it is required that the suit must proceed expeditiously and be decided with utmost urgency with the cooperation of both the contesting parties without resorting to any dilatory tactics,” he added.

The court was hearing five petitions by the two Muslim bodies against two sets of decisions by lower courts – one, to hear a 1991 plea filed by Hindu groups that seeks to restore an ancient temple at the site of the Gyanvapi Masjid and says that the mosque was built by medieval Islamic rulers after demolishing part of the temple, and second, to order a survey by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) of the complex.

The Muslim side had argued that the Hindu suits violated the 1991 law, which locks the religious character of holy sites as it existed on the day of Independence, with the exception of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site. But the court disagreed, saying the religious character of a place can only be determined by court proceedings, and not concluded at the preliminary stage.