Shivani Thakur
Published on: June 7, 2022, at 18:44 IST
The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has petitioned the Supreme Court to become a party in the PIL challenging the constitutional legality of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which froze the religious character of structures as they were at the time of Independence.
Jamiat, through counsel Ejaz Maqbool, is seeking to be impleaded as a respondent in Ashwini Upadhyay’s PIL challenging provisions of the Act supposedly to restore temples that were converted to mosques during Islamic control.
As per the Judgement passed on Nov 9, 2019, the apex court observed that, “Law cannot be used as a device to reach back in time and provide a legal remedy to every person who disagrees with the course that history has taken.”
The Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgment had said, “Our history is replete with actions that have been judged to be morally incorrect and even today are liable to trigger vociferous ideological debate.”
“However, the adoption of the Constitution marks a watershed moment where we, the people of India, departed from the determination of rights and liabilities on the basis of our ideology, our religion, the colour of our skin, or the century when our ancestors arrived at these lands, and submitted to the rule of law.”
“Under our rule of law, this court can adjudicate upon private property claims that were expressly or impliedly recognised by the British sovereign and subsequently not interfered with upon Indian Independence.”
