Samajwadi Party MP Iqra Choudhary has approached the Supreme Court demanding that the Places of Worship Act be implemented “in letter and spirit”, Live Law reported. The bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar on Friday tagged the case to connected petitions.

When Choudhary’s plea was taken up, the chief justice verbally remarked: “Why so many new petitions are being filed? Every week we get one.”

The Act prohibits altering the religious character of places of worship as they existed on August 15, 1947. It bars courts from entertaining suits seeking to alter the status of these sites.

The only exception to the rule is the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built over the remains of the Babri Masjid which was demolished by Hindutva extremists in 1992.

In 2020, the lead petition challenging the Places of Worship Act was filed. A year later, the court issued notice to the Union government on the petition. Subsequently, several similar pleas were filed against the statute.

In December, the managing committee of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi moved the court in support of the Act. The Congress also moved an application in support of the Act in January.

‘Risk of communal tensions’

Iqra Choudhary, in her writ petition before the Supreme Court, contended that repeated lawsuits targeting Muslim places of worship, followed by courts passing hasty orders for surveys, risked stoking communal tensions, Live Law reported.

“The failure to address this disturbing trend has the potential to tear apart the secular fabric of this country,” she said in the petition.

Choudhary also argued that the definition of “ancient monuments” under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 cannot include all places of worship. A place of worship can be listed as an ancient monument only if it is specifically mentioned in the Act, the MP argued.

The petition seeks to restrain courts from admitting petitions seeking to change the character of places of worship and to restrain courts from passing any orders in pending cases.

In December, the Supreme Court barred trial courts from passing orders, including survey directions, in pending lawsuits concerning the religious character of places of worship. The order came amid growing concerns about the increasing number of lawsuits by Hindu parties claiming ownership of mosques and dargahs.

The court also said that no new suits could be registered in any court until it issued further orders on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act.

In November, violence erupted between Hindu and Muslim groups after a trial court ordered a survey of the 16th-century Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal. Five persons were killed in the violence.

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