A local court in Mathura on Friday admitted a plea that seeks to remove a mosque adjacent to the Krishna Janmabhoomi. The court of district judge Sadhna Rani Thakur has fixed November 18 as the next date of hearing in the case.
Earlier in October, a civil court in Mathura had dismissed a plea seeking order to remove the Shahi Idgah Mosque. The petitioner had alleged that it was built over Krishna Janmabhoomi.
Mathura is considered to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna.
The mosque in question was built in the 17th century. According to petitioners, it was built at the birthplace of Lord Krishna, within the 13-acre premises of the Katra Keshav Dev temple.
Since the November 2019 Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case, the clamour has been growing to remove mosques that are adjacent to prominent temples in the country like the Krishna Janambhoomi in Mathura and the Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi.
A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court headed by then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had ruled that the disputed land in Ayodhya be given for construction of a temple, while Muslims would get an alternate plot elsewhere.
A body of priests has condemned the filing of the petition for the removal of the Shahi Idgah mosque. The Akhil Bharatiya Tirth Purohit Mahasabha president Mahesh Pathak said “some outsiders” were trying to disturb the peace in Mathura by raising a frivolous temple-mosque issue.
There is no temple-mosque dispute in Mathura at Srikrishna Janmasthan after a compromise was reached between both the parties in the 20th century, he had said. The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, froze the status of religious places as it existed at the time of Independence. The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid structure was exempted from the law’s purview, it is pointed out. (Input News 18)
