Lucknow: In a meeting at Lucknow on Monday, the Sunni Central Waqf board accepted the five acre land it was offered to construct a mosque after the Supreme Court judgement in the Ayodhya case. A charitable hospital, public library and Indo-Islamic cultural centre will also be constructed at the site.
Six members were present for the crucial meeting, while two of them -- Imran Mabood and Adul Razzaq -- chose to boycott it.
A senior board person said that members first decided whether to accept the land or not, and later whether to construct a mosque or any other institution there.
Before the meeting, it was speculated that another member, Syed Imran Khan along with Razzaq were not in favour of accepting the alternative land as according to them, it violated Sharia law.
Despite this, the chairman of the board, Zufar Ahmad Farooqui, was confident of the proposal being passed.
The five-acre plot for the mosque in Ayodhya was allotted by the Uttar Pradesh government nearly 25 kilometers away from the Ram Temple Complex at Dhannipur village, in the Sohawal Tehsil of Ayodhya.
Meanwhile, litigants in the Babri case had said that the land chosen for the mosque was too far from the town and ought to be reconsidered, or they would not be left with any option but to approach the Supreme Court once again.
“The site for mosque is too far from Ayodhya. It will be difficult for people to go that far to offer Namaz. The decision should be reconsidered and land must be allotted nearby,” Haji Mahboob, one of the litigants said.
Iqbal Ansari, the son of Hashim Ansari, one of the main parties in the case, also expressed his desire for land allocation in an area close to the temple-mosque site. “The allocated land is quite far from Ayodhya. It should be in the city making it convenient for the people. It is now up to the Sunni Waqf Board to accept the land or not.”
In November, the Supreme Court in a landmark verdict had granted the ownership of the site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims entirely to Ram Lalla or infant Lord Ram. It then ordered the government to set up a trust to oversee the construction of the temple, and allot five acres of land at a “prominent place” in Ayodhya for a mosque.
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