In a significant decision, the Supreme Court Thursday barred civil courts across the country from acting on suits challenging the ownership and title of places of worship.
“We deem it fit to direct that no fresh suits shall be registered or proceedings be ordered. In the pending suits, no effective interim orders or final orders including orders of survey can be granted by civil courts till the next date of hearing,” the court said.
This would include the Gyanvapi dispute in Varanasi, the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple dispute in Mathura and several others. The court was informed that such suits are pending in at least 10 places.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna was hearing a clutch of writ petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Places of Worship Act, 1991.
The Court also directed the Centre to file its reply within four weeks.
The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 mandates that the nature of all places of worship, except the one in Ayodhya that was then under litigation, shall be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947.
The Act, brought in by the P V Narasimha Rao-led Congress government during the height of the Ram temple movement, was also meant to apply to the disputed Kashi Vishwanath temple-Gyanvapi mosque complex in Varanasi and the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple-Shahi Idgah mosque complex in Mathura.
The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 mandates that the nature of all places of worship, except the one in Ayodhya that was then under litigation, shall be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947. The Act, brought in by the P V Narasimha Rao-led Congress government during the height of the Ram temple movement, was also meant to apply to the disputed Kashi Vishwanath temple-Gyanvapi mosque complex in Varanasi and the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple-Shahi Idgah mosque complex in Mathura.
Several petitions have challenged the Act, saying it bars the remedy of judicial review which the Supreme Court, in its 1980 judgment in Minerva Mills Ltd. & Ors vs Union Of India & Ors, said was a basic feature of the Constitution and, therefore, outside the legislative competence of Parliament. The Act, the petitioners have said, also violates the principle of secularism.
Hindu groups have been demanding that the Act be scrapped. The government is yet to take a stand on the issue before the court despite being issued notice more than three years ago.
In context: In June 2020, a Lucknow-based trust, Vishwa Bhadra Pujari Purohit Mahasangh, had moved the Supreme Court, challenging the Act. A few days later, the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, too, approached the court, seeking permission to be made a party in the matter. The Jamiat told the court that “even issuance of notice in the… matter will create fear in the minds of the Muslim community with regard to their places of worship, especially in the aftermath of the Ayodhya dispute and will destroy the secular fabric of the nation”. Subsequently, a few more petitions were filed in the matter, including one by a representative of the erstwhile royal family of Kashi. The court said it did not want to multiply the number of writ petitions on the same issue and asked the parties to instead file intervention applications.
Opposing these petitions, the management committee of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi too has filed an intervention application, saying the “consequences” of allowing such pleas “are bound to be drastic”.
The mosque committee pointed to the violence in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, where a court permitted the survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid by allowing an application for the appointment of a survey commissioner the very day the suit was presented.
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