SC rejects plea by son of main petitioner against Places of Worship Act

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Tuesday refused to entertain a petition challenging validity of Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, filed by Nitin Upadhyay, son of the person, Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, whose petition is the lead PIL pending adjudication for the last five years.As the number of petitions - those by the Hindu side questioning the unilateral freezing of religious status of structures as on Aug 15, 1947, and others by the Muslim side seeking implementation of the Act in letter and spirit - grew exponentially over the years, a bench led by CJI Sanjiv Khanna had put a lid over fresh filings on the issue.On Tuesday, a bench of CJI Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar turned down repeated pleas by senior advocate G V Rao, assisted by Ashwini Upadhyay, for tagging the petition with pending ones.The bench declined and said, "No exception can be carved out for you. Please file an intervention application in the pending matters."Chandrachud's bench refused to pass blanket ban on new suitsInterestingly, as mosque-temple disputes proliferated into civil suits by Hindu sides seeking to reclaim ancient temples, allegedly demolished and converted into mosques during Islamic rule in India, the Chief Justice of India-led bench had on Dec 12 last year ordered trial courts across India not to entertain any fresh suit raising 'mosque-temple' disputes and stopped adjudication of pending suits, including those relating to Gyanvapi mosque-Kashi Vishwanath temple and Shahi Idgah-Srikrishna Janmasthan in Mathura.Justice Khanna is the fifth CJI to deal with these cross petitions, one set challenging the validity of Places of Worship Act, and the other seeking its strict implementation.Notice on first PIL petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay was issued by a bench led by Chief Justice of India S A Bobde on March 12, 2021.It remained dormant during the tenure of CJI N V Ramana as during his one year and four-month term, the cross petitions were never taken up for hearing. During CJI U U Lalit's tenure, a bench led by him had recorded 10 questions framed by senior advocates Rakesh Dwivedi and Aman Sinha.During the two-year tenure of CJI D Y Chandrachud, it came up for hearing twice, but the bench led by him had stoutly refused to pass a blanket order barring trial courts from entertaining suits by Hindu sides seeking to reclaim temples.