Ayodhya mosque against Waqf Act: AIMPLB

All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) member Zafaryab Jilani said on Wednesday said the mosque which is planned to come up in Ayodhya following last year’s Supreme Court verdict was against the Waqf Act and “illegal” under the Shariat laws. “According to the Waqf Act, mosques or land of mosques cannot be bartered. The proposed mosque in Ayodhya violates the Act. It violates the Shariat law as the Waqf Act is based on the Shariat,” said Jilani, who was also the convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee. Another executive member of AIMPLB SQR Ilyas said, “We have rejected the proposal to accept land for the mosque at any other place. We lost the title suit and so we don’t need a land for a mosque.” He alleged that the Sunni Central Waqf Board was working under the pressure of the government.

Athar Hussain, the secretary of a trust formed to build the mosque in Ayodhya, however, said everyone interprets the Shariat in their own way and when the land has been allotted under the directive of the Supreme Court, it cannot be illegal. “The power for interpretation of Shariya does not lie in the hands of some limited people. The mosque is the place for offering namaz. So what is wrong if we are building a mosque?” posed Hussain. On the directive of the apex court, the Uttar Pradesh government allotted the five-acre plot in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur for the construction of the mosque.