Latest revision as of 06:25, 24 March 2023

[edit] Court judgements

[edit] Places of worship are not residences: HC

March 14, 2023: The Times of India

New Delhi : Delhi High Court has deprecated the trend of converting public places of worship into private residence by priests, pandits, imams and caretakers.


It underlined that places of worship are very often converted into residences and occupied by people taking care of the premises, including their extended families, domestic help and other trespassers, which is contrary to law.


“In some cases, this court has also noticed that the said places of worship are extended beyond the allotted land and are converted into commercial property, and rents/ lease amounts are also so-ught to be collected in an illegal and unauthorised manner,” Justice Prathiba M Singh said while dealing with a petition related to a prime property located next to Masjid Zabta Ganj on Man Singh Road near India Gate.


Petitioner Zahir Ahmed filed the petition seeking desealing of the property, which consists of one room, kitchen, bathroom and somespace adjacent to the mosque. He also sought permission to reconstruct the property.


The court, however, dismissed the petition and observed that the petitioner was an “unauthorised occupant” and an encroacher in the property belonging to Delhi Waqf Board. It directed him to pay Rs 15 lakh to the waqf board within eight we-eks considering the duration of illegal occupation of the premises and the location of the property. Besides, it also asked him to deposit Rs 2 lakh as costs with the waqf board within eight weeks.


“The present petition is yet another example of the manner in which public places of worship are converted into private tenements and rights are sought to be claimed by priests, pandits, imams, caretakers and their families, in an illegal and unauthorised manner,” the court observed. 


It also said the petitioner had been unable to show any title to the property.


“The family of an imam in a mosque cannot claim any rights in the property of themosque, as the property vests in the waqf and the imam is merely appointed for the purposes of conducting prayers and taking care of the waqf property. The imam occupies the property in a capacity which is fiduciary in nature on behalf of the waqf and any attempt to claim independent rights in the property would be impermissible,” the court noted.


It also pointed out that Ahmed lives with his son in South Delhi’s Sukhdev Vihar and could not have claimed any rights in the property. “The allotted land shall be used only for the purposes of the allotment, that is, to run the mosque and no illegal use shall be permitted,” the court stated.

[edit] Legal issues

[edit] The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991

[edit] History

Dhananjay Mahapatra, March 12, 2021: The Times of India

Sixteen months after deciding the Ayodhya land dispute, the Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response to a PIL challenging the validity of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 which barred courts from entertaining civil suits for changing the character of religious places from what it was at the time of Independence.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde, who was part of the five-judge bench that decided the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in favour of Hindus on November 9, 2019, and Justice A S Bopanna issued notices to the ministries of home, law and culture on the PIL filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

The PIL said the Centre had created arbitrary and irrational retrospective cutoff date of August 15, 1947 for maintaining the character of religious places and barred filing of any suit in courts in respect of “disputes against encroachment done by fundamentalist, barbaric invaders and law-breakers” and all pending suits in this regard shall stand abated.

IN EYE OF STORM

Rao govt brought in Act in face of Babri campaign

The Act had made a lone exception for the Ayodhya case as the dispute had been festering for centuries. “The Centre has barred remedies against illegal encroachment on places of worship and pilgrimage and now Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs can’t file suit or approach a high court under Article 226. Therefore, they won’t be able to restore their places of worship and pilgrimage as guaranteed under Articles 25-26 of the Constitution and illegal barbarian acts of invaders will continue in perpetuity,” he said.

The Places of Worship Act was enacted by the Narasimha Rao government in the face of a campaign started by VHP for control of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and Shahi Idgah in Mathura. VHP has argued that the mosques at the sites in question were built after demolishing Hindu temples and should be handed back to the majority community.

The Rao government brought the law to freeze and maintain the denominational character of all places of worship, barring the Babri-Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi complex in Ayodhya, as it existed on August 15, 1947.

A similar PIL filed by an association of priests through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain is also pending with the court. This PIL has sought scrapping of the 1991 law, ostensibly to revive litigation on disputed religious sites in Mathura (Krishna Janmasthan) and Varanasi (Kashi Vishwanath temple-mosque). This plea had evoked sharp reactions from Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which had moved the SC terming this a surreptitious attempt to correct historical wrongs and warning that it was fraught with the risk of unleashing a barrage of litigations.

In its 1,045 page Ayodhya judgment, the SC had referred to the1991 Act and said, “In providing a guarantee for preservation of the religious character of places of public worship as they existed on August 15, 1947, and against the conversion of places of public worship, Parliament determined that independence from colonial rule furnishes a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing the confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved and that their character will not be altered. “ The Places of Worship Act is a legislative intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values.”

Upadhyay’s petition made a strong pitch for the court to revisit its stand. “Hindus are fighting for restoration of the birthplace of Lord Krishna from hundreds of years and peaceful agitation continues but while enacting the Act, the Centre excluded the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya but not the birthplace of Krishna, though both are incarnations of Vishnu,” he said.

Upadhyay said Islamic rule was established in India after 1192 when Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan and that foreigners ruled India till it gained independence in 1947. Therefore, if any cut-off date was to be fixed for maintaining the character of religious places, then it should be 1192 as after that, thousands of temples and shrines of Hindus, Buddhists and Jains were damaged and converted to mosques by Muslim rulers, he said.

[edit] Statistics

[edit] 2015

State, UT and places of worship per 1,000 households; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, November 7, 2015

See graphic, State, UT and places of worship per 1,000 households