No endeavour to build Ayodhya mosque, reclaim land given for it: BJP leader to Adityanath

The SC had ruled in favour of the Hindu litigants but directed for the allotment of five acres of land in the vicinity of Ayodhya for a mosque. The Sunni Central Waqf Board had later set up an Indo Islamic Cultural Foundation to oversee the mosque construction at Dhannipur.

Lucknow: A BJP leader has asked the Uttar Pradesh government to take back the land allotted for the mosque in Ayodhya saying that no concrete steps have been taken to start the construction of the mosque in the past five years.

The UP government had allotted five acres of land at Dhannipur near Ayodhya on the direction of the Supreme Court in November 2019 following its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit.

The SC had ruled in favour of the Hindu litigants but directed for the allotment of five acres of land in the vicinity of Ayodhya for a mosque. The Sunni Central Waqf Board, which was allotted the land, had later set up an Indo Islamic Cultural Foundation to oversee the mosque construction at Dhannipur.

The construction of the mosque, however, has not yet begun. The Foundation had claimed that the district administration had delayed giving sanction to the map and other clearances.

In a letter to UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, BJP leader Rajnish Singh said that the land allotted for the mosque should be taken back by the state government as nothing has been done in this regard.

‘’It seems that there never was any intention to construct a mosque....the real purpose was only to keep the dispute alive,’’ Singh said in his letter. He said that the land was being used for purposes other than the construction of the mosque.

He also said that the Muslim side only wanted to ‘protect’ the legacy of the Mughal emperor Babar, who was blamed for the demolition of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the construction of the Babri Masjid there.

Incidentally, Singh had filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court contending that the Taj Mahal, popularly known as the Monument of Love, was in fact a Shiva Temple.