The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday has dismissed a PIL aiming to ban the Azan on loudspeakers, filed by Bajrang Dal leader Shaktisinh Zala. The court called the PIL, ‘wholly misconceived’ as the Azan lasts for less than ten minutes.
A division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha P Mayee asked the petitioner whether the noise of bells and gongs during `aarti’ at a temple is not heard outside the premises’.
The Bajrang Dal petitioner claimed that “noise pollution” caused by azan when played through loudspeakers affects people’s, especially children’s health and causes inconvenience otherwise.
Dharmendra Prajapati, a doctor from Gandhinagar, who took objection to azaan blaring five times a day from a mosque near his hospital argued that it caused disturbance to the people, especially the patients.
The bench sought to know on what grounds the petitioner claimed noise pollution is caused.
Azan is conducted for a maximum of ten minutes at a time at different hours of the day, the court pointed out. “We fail to understand how the human voice making azan through loudspeaker in the morning could achieve the decibel (level) to the extent of creating noise pollution, causing health hazards for the public at large,” it further said.
The Gujarat High Court reiterated, “We are not entertaining this kind of PIL. It is a faith and practice going for years, and it is for 5-10 minutes. In your temple, the morning aarti with drums and music also starts early at 3 am. So it does not cause any kind of noise to anyone? Can you say the noise of ghanta (bell) and ghadiyal (gong) remains in temple premises only and does not percolate outside the temple?”
Additionally, the court even asked about the scientific nature of such a claim. “There is a scientific method for measuring noise pollution, but the petition does not provide any data to show that a ten-minute azan causes noise pollution”, the court added.
“We therefore, do not find any good ground to entertain this PIL. It is thus dismissed,” the court said.
