NEW DELHI:

BJP leader Rajneesh Singh

has written to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, asking the government to take back the land allotted for the construction of mosque in Ayodhya. He claimed that the ‘intention was never to establish a mosque’ since the Supreme Court’s verdict in 2019.
The top court’s five-judge bench, led by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, had settled the decades-old Ayodhya dispute on November 9, 2019. The judgment allowed the construction of a Ram temple at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid and directed the allocation of a five-acre plot in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur area for the construction of a mosque.
The

Sunni Central Waqf Board

after court’s decision, established the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation to oversee the construction of the mosque on the allotted land.
However, Singh alleged in his letter, that the Muslim community made no real effort to build the mosque but was instead trying to “create discord under the pretext of constructing one.”

“In compliance with the Supreme Court’s order, the land allocated to Sunni Central Waqf Board in Ayodhya is being used by the mosque’s responsible persons for other purposes. The Muslim community’s intention was never to construct the mosque but rather to keep the disturbance and disorder alive under the guise of a mosque. However, this has not been possible due to your leadership,” he said in the letter to UP CM.
He also claimed that “a mosque is not necessary for offering prayers” and accused the Muslim community of trying to keep tensions alive in the name of the mosque.

Speaking to PTI, Singh said, “The Muslim community only wants to preserve Babur’s legacy through this mosque and manipulate Hindu sentiments in the name of the Babri Masjid.”
Athar Husain, the secretary of the Ayodhya Masjid Trust, declined to comment on the issue when contacted by PTI news agency.
In a similar controversial move in 2022, Singh filed a petition in the Allahabad high court, claiming that the Taj Mahal was originally a Shiva temple called “Tejo Mahalaya.”