The Supreme Court on Tuesday, January 16, granted interim relief to the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh in connection to the Krishna Janmabhoomi case. Earlier in December last year, the Allahabad High Court had appointed an advocate commissioner to survey the mosque on behalf of various petitioners who claimed that the mosque stands on temple land.
Live Law reports that staying the Allahabad Court’s order, the Supreme Court said, “We have reservations about the application. Look at the prayer. It's so vague. Read it. You cannot make an omnibus application like this. You have to be very clear about what you want the local commissioner to do.”
The order was passed by a bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta. Advocate Reena N Singh speaking to ANI said that the next hearing had been scheduled for January 23. She also pointed out that the SC had only stayed the High Court’s survey order. The hearing before the Allahabad High Court would continue.
In 2022, Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta and others filed a suit in the court of the Civil Judge Senior Division (III) claiming that the mosque stands on land belonging to the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Trust on which the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi temple also stands. They demanded that the mosque be removed from the site.
As The Wire reports, the petitioners on behalf of the temple are contesting a 1968 agreement reached between the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Seva Sangh, a now-defunct body of the temple, and the mosque’s trust over the disputed land. According to another report in The Wire, the two sides agreed that of the 13.37 acres, 10.9 acres would belong to the temple and 2.5 acres to the mosque. The petitioners are however now claiming that all of the 13.37 acres belong to the temple and that the mosque had obtained the land through ‘fraudulent’ means.
The Supreme Court’s interim order granting relief to the Shahi Idgah mosque comes at a time when controversy rages on about the consecration of the Ram Temple, the BJP’s poll promise in Ayodhya, scheduled on January 22.