The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board on Tuesday said it was still undecided on whether to accept 5 acres offered to it for the construction of a mosque in Ayodhya as per the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi case.
The board, however, reiterated its stand expressed on November 9 that it will not go in for any review of the verdict, under which the court directed the Central government to form a Trust within three months for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya.
A decision on 5 acres was “still in the consideration of the board,” its chairman Zufar Faruqi said here after a meeting.
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“The members of the board have asked for more time to formulate their views. As and when a decision is taken, it shall be communicated separately,” he said.
Six out of seven members of the board voted in favour of the decision to not challenge the verdict. Dissenting member Abdur Razzaque Khan was in favour of filing a review petition.
Another member Imran Mabood Khan, who has publicly favoured a review petition, did not attend the meeting.
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Mr. Faruqi stressed that the board did not demand 5 acres in Ayodhya and had no role to play in the debate over it.
To a query of journalists on the logic behind the decision to not file a review petition, he said it was based on the board's earlier stated public stand that “we would accept whatever verdict the Supreme Court delivered, even if it went against us.”
When asked to respond to allegations by some petitioners that the Board ruled out filing a review petition due to CBI pressure, he said, “None of the petitioners said this to me. If they have told you, you can go and ask them.”
The The Home Department, headed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in October, right before the conclusion of the hearing in the Ayodhya case, recommended a CBI probe into the “irregular” sale, purchase and transfer of Waqf land by the Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Shia Central Waqf Board.
In the case of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, it recently not only declined to accept 5 acres in Ayodhya but also decided to file a review petition. The “restitution by granting 5 acres where fundamental values have been damaged to the extent of causing national shame, will not in any manner heal the wounds caused,” it said on November 17 after a meeting of its working committee chaired by president Maulana Sayyad Mohammad Rabe Hassani Nadwi.