Gyanvapi mosque managing committee moves SC against pleas challenging Places of Worship Act
The claims made by petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act were ‘rhetorical and communal’, the panel said.
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The managing committee of the Gyanvapi mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi has moved the Supreme Court against the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Places of Worship Act, saying that the consequences sought by it were “bound to be drastic”, Live Law reported on Friday.
The Places of Worship Act, 1991, prohibits any changes to the religious character of a place of worship in independent India. The only exception to the law was the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, where a Ram temple is now being built following a Supreme Court judgement.
In 2020, a lead petition was filed challenging the Act. A year later, the court issued notice to the Union government on the petition. Subsequently, several similar pleas were filed against the statute.
In an intervention application on these petitions, the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee, which takes care of the Gyanvapi mosque, noted that it was a key stakeholder in the legal deliberation on the Act, Live Law reported.
In August 2023, an order of a Supreme Court bench headed by DY Chandrachud, who was the chief justice at the time, permitted a survey to be carried out at the mosque to examine whether the religious structure was built on a temple.
While hearing the matter in 2022, Chandrachud also maintained that ascertaining the...
