Gyanvapi mosque case: CPI-M says court order against aim behind places of worship act

The CPI-M political bureau said on Tuesday that the Varanasi district court's ruling in the Gyanvapi mosque case "is a clear violation of the aim behind" the 1991 Places of Worship Act.

The CPI-M statement comes even as most opposition parties, including the Congress, have remained silent officially on the matter. It said that "wrong interpretations of the law by sections of the judiciary" would lead to "serious consequences of the kind that the law was meant to prevent".

The court said on Monday that the suits seeking the right to worship inside the mosque were maintainable and were not barred by the Places of Worship Act. The CPI-M statement targeted the BJP and cautioned against distortion of history.


"It is no secret that the ruling party is hell-bent on a distorted interpretation of history to target minority communities. The claim that present day mosques were built on sites where temples were destroyed has been a longstanding method to whip up religious sentiments and to use this for a communal agenda," the polit bureau said.

Maintaining that "the 1991 law is to uphold the paramount national interest of communal harmony and to prevent a plethora of motivated petitions such as those in Mathura and Varanasi", the CPI-M reiterated its support for the strict implementation of the law in letter and spirit.