Supreme Court.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna on Monday (February 17, 2025) said the hearing in petitions challenging the Places of Worship Act (Special Provisions) Act of 1991, a statute that has protected the identity and character of religious sites since Independence, may be pushed to March 2025.
The case, pending for over four years, was due to be heard on February 17. However, the third judge on the Bench, Justice K.V. Viswanathan, was unavailable as he was heading another Bench of the apex court.
Editorial | Places and worship: On the Supreme Court hearing
Senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for one of the petitioners, orally mentioned the case before the two-judge Bench combination of Chief Justice Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar.
“It may not be taken up today,” Chief Justice Khanna addressed Ms. Jaising.
The CJI also remarked that a number of petitions have been filed in the case. “We will take it up,” the CJI said.
Ms. Jaising said the court has to frame the issues which have to be addressed in the case.
“This has to be done. We will see sometime in March,” the Chief Justice observed. The Centre has not filed a counter-affidavit, expressing its views on the challenge to the validity of the 1991 Act.
SC calls for limit to filing fresh pleas
Meanwhile, several minority organisations, political parties and eminent individuals, represented variously by senior advocates AM Singhvi, P. Wilson, Raju Ramachandran and others, have moved the Supreme Court, urging it to protect the Places of Worship Act.
They have argued that the 1991 law stood as a firm bastion against the mushrooming suits which ultimately intended to pave the way towards retrogression and communal tensions. They highlighted that various local courts, by ordering surveys of mosque premises in civil suits, were in direct violation of Sections 3 of the Act prohibiting the conversion of any place of worship and Section 4, which imposed a positive obligation to maintain the religious character of every place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947.
On December 12 last year, the apex court had barred civil courts from registering fresh suits or passing orders in pending ones seeking to “re-claim” temples destroyed by Mughal “invaders” in the 16th century. Justice Viswanathan, in that hearing, had indicated that Section 3 was an “effective manifestation or a reiteration of Constitutional principles” and the suits could be objected to on the ground of violation of these basic Constitutional principles even in the absence of the 1991 Act.
Recently, the Indian National Congress (INC) through its general secretary K.C. Venugopal had filed an intervention application in the case, underscoring that secularism was developed in India as a part of nationalism and the Freedom Movement. The INC said the parliamentary Act “reflected the mandate of the Indian populace”. The party said the law furthered the right to freedom of religion and was an established basic feature of the Constitution.
Also Read | What does the Places of Worship Act protect?
“The POWA is intrinsically related to the obligations of the secular state,” the INC quoted from the Ramjanmabhoomi case judgment of 2019.
Referring to these new interventions, the Chief Justice said there ought to be a limit to the filings.
The CJI said the court would take a call on whether the new interventions need to be permitted when the case comes up for hearing next.
Published – February 17, 2025 12:29 pm IST
