Willing to hand over 200 sq m to Ravidas temple devotees: Centre to SC

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 18

The Centre is willing to hand over 200-square-metre piece of land to a committee of devotees for construction of Guru Ravidas temple which was demolished by Delhi Development Authority in August on the orders of the top court as it stood on forest land situated in south Delhi.

Attorney General KK Venugopal told a Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on Friday that he has talked to all the parties including devotees and government officials and the Centre has agreed to give the same piece of land considering sensitivity and faith of devotees. Five of the seven petitioners demanding reconstruction of the temple have agreed to the proposal, he said.

“The entire belief and faith of the devotees of Sant Ravidas is in the site where he stayed…In the interest of peace and harmony we want to return the site to the devotees for construction of the temple,” Venugopal told the Bench.

The Bench took the Attorney General’s statement on record and asked parties demanding reconstruction of the temple to submit objections, if any by October 21, the next date of hearing.

A mystic poet-saint and one of the stalwarts of Bhakti movement, Guru Ravidas (1450-1520) has a large number of followers, mostly dalits, in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. After the demolition of the temple situated in Tughlaqabad area of Delhi his followers had been protesting against it.

The Supreme Court had on October 4 asked those seeking permission to rebuild the Guru Ravidas Temple in Delhi’s Tughlaqabad forest area to amicably find a better location for the temple.

“You find an amicable solution and come back to us. Any day we can pass the order. We respect the sentiments of everybody on the Earth but we have to follow the law,” it had said while dealing petitions filed by former MPs Ashok Tanwar and Pradeep Jain Aditya and others seeking reconstruction of Guru Ravidas Temple.

Maintaining that they were not seeking any property rights over the land, the two Congress leaders submitted that they were only “for enforcement and protection of their right to worship the pious land where Saint Guru Ravidas lived, and which was gifted to him by Sultan Sikander Lodhi in 1509.”

Contending that that the pious site has been worshipped for 500-600 years and was protected as per the provisions of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, the petitioners claimed that the “Guru Dham” and the adjoining structures had been there for centuries and prior to any master plans or modern English law system now prevalent in India. 

“Hence, no violation can be caused by a historical structure, which has come under green zone under laws which are subsequent to structure. The above temple/Guru Dham was in Jahapanah City Forest, which is actually an urban park where people go for morning walks,” they submitted.