The Supreme Court docket is ready to listen to on Friday a petition difficult a trial courtroom’s order directing a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, elevating questions over its legality and the way through which it was ordered. The survey was ordered by an area courtroom in response to a go well with claiming {that a} temple as soon as stood at this web site.
The petition, filed by the mosque’s managing committee, calls for an instantaneous keep on the survey, arguing that such surveys, notably of historic locations of worship, may exacerbate communal tensions and undermine the secular material of the nation.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and justice PV Sanjay Kumar will take up the plea, which has chosen to bypass the Allahabad excessive courtroom, urging the Supreme Court docket to intervene straight to forestall additional communal stress and for reinforcing judicial propriety in dealing with delicate disputes involving historic locations of worship.
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The surveys, carried out on the orders of an area civil courtroom, have triggered widespread tensions in Sambhal, culminating in violent clashes on November 24 that left 4 individuals lifeless and several other injured, together with police personnel. Police have arrested 25 people, together with political leaders, and named over 2,000 unidentified individuals in a number of FIRs.
The dispute centres on the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi, which the committee contends has been in steady use as a mosque because the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, a go well with filed on November 19, 2024, by eight plaintiffs, together with Supreme Court docket lawyer Hari Shankar Jain, stated that the mosque was constructed on the positioning of a “Harihar Temple” and sought entry to the positioning, which they known as a temple. Hari Shankar Jain and his son, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, have been spearheading a number of such fits, together with on the Gyanvapi mosque adjoining the Kashi Vishwanath temple and Shree Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah dispute in Mathura, urgent for reclamation of Hindu temple websites.
On the identical day, the civil courtroom in Sambhal allowed an software below Order 26 Rule 9 of the Code of Civil Process, appointing an advocate commissioner to conduct a survey of the mosque with pictures and videography. The order was handed ex parte, with no discover to the mosque administration. Inside hours of the order, the survey was carried out, and one other survey was carried out 5 days later, with barely six hours’ discover to the mosque committee, in line with the plea.
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The petition alleges that these actions have been undertaken in undue haste and with out offering the committee with a possibility to contest the order or search judicial cures.
“It’s below these extraordinary circumstances that the petitioner is beseeching this Hon’ble Court docket to kindly intervene and keep the proceedings of Civil Swimsuit No 166 of 2024 pending earlier than the Ld Civil Decide (Senior Division), Sambhal at Chandausi. The new haste through which the survey was allowed and carried out all inside a day and out of the blue one other survey was carried out with a discover of barely six hours, has given rise to widespread communal tensions and threatens the secular and democratic material of the nation,” said the plea, filed via advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi.
The committee’s petition argues that the case violates the Locations of Worship (Particular Provisions) Act, 1991, which prohibits the conversion of a spiritual place’s character because it existed on August 15, 1947. It additionally cites provisions below the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Websites and Stays Act, 1958, which defend historic locations of worship from desecration or misuse.
Additional, the petition highlights procedural lapses within the trial courtroom’s order, together with the absence of any causes or phrases of reference for the survey. It contends that such surveys are being more and more ordered in disputes over locations of worship, doubtlessly inflaming communal passions nationwide.
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“The style through which survey was ordered on this case and has been ordered in another circumstances can have an instantaneous influence in various circumstances throughout the nation which were filed not too long ago regarding locations of worship the place such orders will tend to inflame communal passions, trigger legislation and order issues and harm the secular material of the nation,” learn the plea.
To make certain, whereas listening to the same dispute over the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the CJI-led bench on November 22 acknowledged the need of figuring out the authorized maintainability of a go well with — in gentle of the Locations of Worship Act, 1991 — filed by a gaggle of Hindu ladies looking for the correct to worship Hindu deities throughout the mosque complicated. On this case too, the mosque administration committee has argued that every one fits by the Hindu aspect are barred by the 1991 Act, which freezes the spiritual character of all locations of worship as of August 15, 1947, apart from the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute that was saved out of the purview of this legislation by the statute itself.
Notably, a batch of petitions – some looking for to scrap the 1991 Act and a few others asking for tight enforcement of that legislation — have remained pending earlier than the highest courtroom since March 2021.
