The Supreme Court has ordered a stay on any further demolition of the Dargah Mubarak Khan Shaheed in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur till the pending proceedings under the Uttar Pradesh Public Premises Act, 1972, have been disposed of.
The stay on demolition orders has been granted a stay on the oral request of the petitioner to the Court. He informed the court that Dargah Mubarak Khan Shaheed had received a letter on March 8 from the secretary of the Gorakhpur Development Authority (GDA) requesting the city’s superintendent of police to deploy a force and begin the demolition work from Tuesday, Live Law reported.
A two judged Bench of Justice Navin Sinha and Justice Krishna Murari has also issued notice to the State of Uttar Pradesh in this regard. The special leave petition has been filed challenging Allahabad High Court’s judgement dated 10th Feb 2021 dismissing petitioners request of declaring the demolition as void and interdicting the authorities from further demolition.
The plea filed by the petitioner stated “Idgah has a tomb of Saint Mubarak Khan Shaheed and Mosque in the southern side of the tomb, which according to the petitioners has been since a long time. It has been used by the Muslim Community for offering prayers on important festivities such as Eid. It is also a symbol of unity for both the Hindu and Islamic faith as it is visited by a large number of people of both the communities.”
According to the petitioner, the use of the properties was in 1959 disturbed by the principal of Government Normal School after which egress and ingress were stopped, leading to the filing of a suit before munsif’s court. One of the relief sought that time against the defendants, including the Uttar Pradesh state and Gorakhpur collector, was to open the eastern gate of the Brijman compound for the egress and ingress. The suit went in the plaintiff’s favour, LiveLaw cited the petitioner as saying.
As of now, on the petitioner’s request, the court has granted interim relief by staying the demolition.
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Ghazala Ahmad is the Delhi Correspondent for The Cognate.
