SC Rebuke has its Effect: UP Mulls Law to Regulate Religious Places

Twenty years back, the Uttar Pradesh government had passed the UP Regulation of Public Religious Building and Places Bill, 2000. It did not get the President's assent. Now, the Yogi government is preparing an ordinance to regulate religious places and buildings. ATUL CHANDRA writes on the developments from Lucknow.

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After a controversial law on love jihad, which is packaged as an anti-conversion law, the Uttar Pradesh government is working on an ordinance to regulate and control the functioning of religious places on private and public land.

A senior government functionary has confirmed that the ordinance is being drafted by the state's law department. The Uttar Pradesh Law Commission is also involved in the process. A presentation in this regard was recently shown to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has suggested some changes in its draft.

Although some are apprehensive that the move is aimed at Muslim religious places, sources say it has been prompted by a reprimand which the government got from the Supreme Court in October 2019, during a hearing on a case related to a temple in Bulandshahr's Dibai tehsil. A bench headed by Justice NV Ramana and consisting of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Krishna Murari as well had asked the state government if, in the absence of a law, anybody can build a temple in Uttar Pradesh and collect money from the public.

In 2006, the Uttar Pradesh government changed the management of the 300-year-old Shri Deviji Bela Bhawani temple in Dibai through an administrative order and began to regulate its properties and offerings under the Societies Registration Act. This was challenged by some "pandas" (priests).

The case has been pending since 2010. The Supreme Court is hearing an appeal against an order of the Allahabad High Court which had allowed the offerings made at the temple to be given to the pandas.

"Can you take over any temple, do anything by issuing government orders? This is anarchy," the bench had observed and asked the state government why it has not enacted a law to oversee the management of temples and religious endowments. The court also asked the government why it had not adopted the central legislation on the issue.

In an earlier hearing as well, the Supreme Court expressed its displeasure over the state counsel's inability to explain whether Uttar Pradesh had enacted any legislation for management of temples and religious endowments.

As if to complement the government's effort, the state Law Commission circulated a questionnaire last February containing 16 questions. It was said to be a preparatory exercise for formulating a law on religious places. The tongue-lashing by the Supreme Court, followed by the questionnaire, gave rise to apprehensions that the state government was preparing legislation to regulate religious places and buildings. If the questionnaire is any clue, the focus could be on some 5,000 temples.

Most of these temples are alleged to be illegal.

The questions pertain to various aspects of a religious place. For instance, there were those seeking details of bank accounts, the main source of funds, grants, or assistance received from the government and how the funds are being used. One of the questions asked if the district magistrate must be the CEO of each and every religious site. Another, more importantly, sought to know if the government should make an Act to manage religious sites.

The state had earlier passed the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Public Religious Building and Places Bill, moved by the Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Ram Prakash Gupta. The bill did not get the assent of the then President KR Narayanan and lapsed. After the Supreme Court's rebuke, the Yogi Adityanath government has got down to the task in right earnest.

The bill passed by the Gupta government had raised the hackles of the Opposition parties who objected to it in both Houses over fears that it was aimed against the minority community. Its provisions, however, were not community-specific and referred to all religions and their places of worship.

The provisions extended to mosques, gurudwaras and temples. Section 3 of the bill provided, "No building or place, not already used as a public religious building or public religious place before the commencement of this Act, shall, after such commencement, be used as public religious building or as public religious place…"

Section 2(d) of the bill defined a "public religious building" as a "building, by whatever name described, used or intended to be used or dedicated for being used, generally by any religious denomination or section thereof as of right for performing religious worship or for carrying on any activity pertaining to the matter of religion or for the purpose of religious instructions, or offering prayers which include bhajans, kirtan, stuti and namaz or performance of any religious rites by persons of, or belonging to, any religion, creed, sect or class, such as a temple, mosque, gurdwara, church, chhattri, dargah, mazar, khangah, matha, takiya or the like." Public religious places under this sub-section included a burial ground or a cremation ground.

Under section 4 of the bill, district magistrates have been authorised to grant permission for use of public places/buildings for religious purposes: "Any person intending to use a building as public religious building or a place as public religious place or for the construction of public religious building shall make an application…to the district magistrate."

It appears that the role envisaged for a district magistrate in the proposed law, as per the law panel's questionnaire, will be different from what was provided for in the bill passed in 2000.

As of now, Muslims are not worried about the impact of the new legislation as the government cannot interfere in the administration of their religious places.

Zafaryab Jilani, who represented the Muslim side in the Babri Masjid dispute in the Supreme Court said that Muslims are not allowed to build mosques on an illegal piece of land, hence they have no worry on that count. As for funds, he said that the Enforcement Directorate and other agencies are there to watch our sources of funding.

(The writer is a senior Lucknow-based journalist and former resident editor of The Times of India in Lucknow. The views are personal.)