29 March 2024

UP Sunni Waqf Board announces trust for building mosque in Ayodhya

Land decided by government for Mosque at Raunahi village of Ayodhya. -

Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board President Zufar Ahmad Farooqui on Wednesday announced formation of a trust — Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation — for the construction of mosque in the five-acre plot in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village.

The development comes even as preparations are on in full swing for the ground-breaking ceremony for the Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5, which would be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The Trust will oversee the construction of a mosque, Indo-Islamic research centre, library and hospital in the five-acre land allotted to the board in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village,” Farooqui told PTI.

Ahmad Farooqui said that he would be chief trustee and the chairman of the trust. “The Trust will have 15 members, of which names of nine have been declared. They will ‘co-opt six other members’,” PTI quoted Farooqui as saying.

In February and then earlier this month, the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board had confirmed that it had accepted the 5 acres allocated to it and would set up a trust to build a mosque.

In Dhannipur, about 30 km from Ayodhya town, where Muslims make up 60% per cent of the population, locals said they last heard of the proposed mosque in February when officials of the revenue department had come to measure the land.

In November 2019, three months after the abrogation of Article 370, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, while settling a decades-old title suit over the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site, directed that it be handed over to a Centre-appointed Trust for construction of a temple and Muslims be given an alternate 5-acre site for a mosque.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh government has prepared a phase-wise development plan for Ayodhya and the foundation stones for these projects would also be laid on August 5. Many other projects would be inaugurated the same day.

The Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the Trust constituted to oversee the temple construction, said the “bhoomi pujan” would be around noon and before that, PM Modi would offer prayers at Hanuman Garhi and the makeshift temple of the idol of Ramlalla.

Incidentally, August 5 will mark one year of the abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the State of Jammu & Kashmir into two Union Territories.

Source: The Indian Express


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