The Supreme Court on Monday said “there should be a limit” to the number of intervention applications being filed in connection with cases challenging the constitutional validity of the 1991 Places of Worship Special Provisions Act, reported Bar and Bench.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice PV Sanjay Kumar directed that the matter be heard by a three-judge bench in April.

“We will not take up the Places of Worship Act matter today,” said Khanna. “It is a three-judge bench matter. Too many petitions filed…There is a limit to interventions being filed.”

The Act does not allow any changes to the religious character of a place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947.

The challenge to the Act was spearheaded by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashwini Upadhyay, who filed a petition in 2020 arguing that the law protects the “illegal acts of invaders” by barring legal remedies for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs.

Several political parties and leaders, including the Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi, have filed intervention applications defending the validity of the Act.

“Last time we allowed so many interventions,” the bench said on Monday. “Application for fresh interventions will be allowed given it raised some ground which is not raised as yet.”

In December, Supreme Court instructed the Union government to file an affidavit addressing the constitutional challenges to the 1991 Act. The court was informed on Monday that this has not yet been done despite the Centre being granted several extensions.

The Centre has also been instructed to upload the affidavit on a publicly accessible website. The direction came amid growing concerns about the increasing number of lawsuits by Hindu parties claiming ownership of mosques and dargahs.

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.

On December 12, the top court barred trial courts from passing interim or final orders, including survey directions, in pending lawsuits concerning the religious character of places of worship.

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.

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