Plea by two sisters claiming ownership of land offered for Ayodhya mosque dismissed by Allahabad HC with liberty to file a fresh plea

Two sisters claimed that out of the 28 acres of their land, the authorities allotted 5 acres for the construction of the Ayodhya Mosque following the Supreme Court directions of the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid dispute. The plea was dismissed by the Allahabad HC on Monday, reports Rhea Binoy

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The Allahabad High Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed against the allotment of land in Ayodhya's Dhannipur village for the construction of a mosque, following the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid dispute.

Two Delhi-based sisters Rani Kapoor and Rama Rani Punjabi had claimed ownership of the five-acre land allotted to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the mosque and had moved to the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on February 3.

Additional Advocate General Ramesh Kumar Singh, appearing for the state, opposed the plea saying that the plot numbers allotted for the mosque are different from those of the petition filed by the sisters.

After the petitioners' lawyer H.G.S Parihar sought to withdraw the plea with the liberty to file an afresh petition,  a division bench of Justices D K Upadhyay and Manish Kumar dismissed the plea with the liberty sought for. The bench also expressed concerns with Parihar for filing the petition in a cursory manner without identifying the facts.

The sisters in their writ petition said that their father Gyan Chandra had come to India during partition in 1947 from Punjab and settled in Faizabad (now Ayodhya) district.

They went on to claim that their father was allotted a 28- acre land in Dhannipur village by the Nazul Department for five years. He continued to possess the land after those five years, after which his name was added in the revenue records.

However, the petitioners' father's name was struck down from the records, after which the father had filed a report with the Additional Commissioner, Ayodhya.

The consolidation officer again removed their father's name from the records during the consolidation proceedings, the petitioners' further claimed.

An appeal was later preferred before the Settlement Officer of Consolidation, Ayodhya. The authorities without considering the said petition allotted five acres of their 28-acre land to the Waqf Board for the constructing of the mosque, the sisters said.

The petitioners demanded that the authorities be barred from transferring the land to the Sunni Waqf Board since their dispute is pending before the settlement officer.

In accordance with the Supreme Court's direction in the Ram Janmabhoomi – Babri Masjid verdict, the Uttar Pradesh government has allotted five-acre land to the Sunni Waqf Board in Dhannipur village for the construction of a mosque.

(Rhea Binoy is a journalism student at the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune and is an intern with The Leaflet.)