Retired Army officer moves Supreme Court against Places of Worship Act

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, June 7

A fresh petition in the Supreme Court on Tuesday challenged the validity of certain provisions of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 on the ground that it legalised the illegal occupation of the ancient and historical places of worship and pilgrimage by “barbaric foreign invaders”.

This is the eighth petition against the controversial law that created a retrospective cut-off date and declared that the character of places of worship shall be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947. Earlier, Vishwa Bhadra Pujari Purohit Mahasangh, Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, Subharanian Swamy, Rudra Vikram Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Devakinandan Thakur and Swami Jitendranand had moved the top court against various provisions of the Act.

The Supreme Court had in March 2021 issued notice to the Centre on some of the petitions challenging the validity of certain provisions of the 1991 Act.

Petitioner Anil Kabotra -- a retired Army officer -- contended that the 1991 law created an “arbitrary and irrational retrospective cut-off date” of August 15, 1947, for maintaining the character of the places of worship or pilgrimage against encroachment done by “fundamentalist-barbaric invaders and law-breakers”.

Kobatra has challenged the constitutional validity of Sections 2, 3, and 4 of the 1991 Act on the ground that Parliament “transgressed its legislative power” by barring remedy of judicial review – a basic feature of the Constitution and the impugned provisions violated principles of secularism.

Section 3 and Section 4 of the Act deal with the bar of conversion of places of worship and declaration as to the religious character of certain places of worship and the bar of jurisdiction of courts, respectively.

The Act barred the right and remedy against encroachment made on religious places of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs, the petitioner pointed out and wondered how the birthplace of Lord Ram at Ayodhya was excluded from its ambit but not the birthplace of Lord Krishna in Mathura, though both are incarnations of Lord Vishnu.

Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind – a prominent Muslim organisation -- has already moved the Supreme Court seeking dismissal of petitions challenging the validity of the Places of Worship Act, saying it will open floodgates of litigation against countless mosques across India and “the religious divide from which the country is recovering in the aftermath of the Ayodhya dispute will only be widened.”

Kabatra contended that as a result of the law no suit or proceeding shall lie in court in respect of disputes against encroachment done by barbaric invaders and lawbreakers and such proceedings shall stand abated.

He said the injury caused to Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs is “extremely large” because Sections 2, 3, and 4 of the 1991 Act have taken away the right to approach the court and thus, the right to judicial remedy has been closed, he said, adding the “Centre neither can close the doors of courts of the first instance, appellate courts, constitutional courts for aggrieved Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs, nor take away the power of High Courts and Supreme Court, conferred under Articles 226 and 32.”

Kabatra demanded that the provisions under challenge should be declared “void and unconstitutional” for violating Articles, including 14 (right to equality), 26 (freedom to manage religious affairs), and 29 (protection of interests of minorities) of the Constitution, in so far as they legalised the ancient and historical places of worship and pilgrimage, illegally occupied by the “barbaric foreign invaders”.

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