Rejecting a plea filed for the construction of a mosque, temple in the new Secretariat, the Supreme Court termed the petition as a “misconceived prayer”.
The bench, comprising of Justices Ashok Bhushan and Subhash Reddy, headed by the former, dismissed the plea and said, “It is a misconceived prayer. We cannot allow all this under Article 32.”
The petition had claimed that before the demolition of the Secretariat, it housed two mosque and one temple which must be included in the blueprint for the new version. However, the government has allegedly formulated the design of the building to be made afresh with ‘not even a whisper’ of any religious place of worship.
As the demolition was approved and duly permitted by the Telangana State’s High Court, the top court told the petitioner, “How can you file an Article 32 here when demolition was permitted by High Court. This has to lie there.”
Article 32 of the Indian Constitution presents rights to a person to be liable to take a mater to the SC to seek justice if and when the individual believes that they are being deprived of their rights unduly.
Advocate KhajaAijazuddin, the petitioner, spoke about the land area of the Secretariat which constitutes of 25 acres along with mentioning the buildings for Office of the Chief Minister of Telangana, Council of Ministers and bureaucrats situated within its premises. Giving the exact locations and names of the places, he said,“It is respectfully submitted that within the Secretariat complex existed a temple namely NallaPochamma temple which is situated in one of the Blocks i.e. A Block, and two mosques namely Masjid Dafaatir-e-Muatamadi located adjacent to the ‘C’ Block and Masjid-e-Hashmi located near the ‘D’ Block.”
MrAijazuddin said that after passing the order for the demolition of the complex, all the places built within it were also ordered to be broken down. This led to an increase in the number of PILS in the State’s apex court. Refusing to entertain any plea, the High Court had approved the demolition of the Secretariat. The petitioner urged that he was only bothered about the demolition of the religious places that earlier existed there and not the building in itself as the demolition of the temple and the mosques violated the fundamental rights of Indians, specifically keeping them deprived of the rights placed under Articles 14, 21, 15 and 26 of the Indian Constitution.
His plea also mentioned, “The Chief Minister of Telangana has just merely apologized for the demolition of the religious structures but never committed to rebuilding the religious places which were demolished. It is a settled Principle of Law, once the religious structure existed, it remains forever as the same, is enshrined under Article 26 of the Constitution of India.”
Protecting and safeguarding the religious grounds is the government’s duty and they ought to reconstruct the structures in the same place they existed, the petition read.
Later, the petitioner sought for withdrawing the plea and asked SC for a direction to the High Court to dispose of the same. However, the top court refused to direct the state court but allowed the withdrawing of the case. The petition was hence dismissed as “withdrawn”.
Previously, a plea was filed in the High Court of the State after it denied to get involved in the government’s order for changing or demolishing the Secretariat complex. However, this appeal too was rejected.
