Supreme Court to hear plea on Sambhal mosque survey today

The Supreme Court is set to hear on Friday a petition challenging a trial court’s order directing a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, raising questions over its legality and the manner in which it was ordered. The survey was ordered by a local court in response to a suit claiming that a temple once stood at this site.

The petition, filed by the mosque’s managing committee, demands an immediate stay on the survey, arguing that such surveys, particularly of historic places of worship, could exacerbate communal tensions and undermine the secular fabric of the country.

A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and justice PV Sanjay Kumar will take up the plea, which has chosen to bypass the Allahabad high court, urging the Supreme Court to intervene directly to prevent further communal tension and for reinforcing judicial propriety in handling sensitive disputes involving historic places of worship.

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The surveys, carried out on the orders of a local civil court, have triggered widespread tensions in Sambhal, culminating in violent clashes on November 24 that left four people dead and several injured, including police personnel. Police have arrested 25 individuals, including political leaders, and named over 2,000 unidentified persons in multiple FIRs.

The dispute centres on the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi, which the committee contends has been in continuous use as a mosque since the 16th century. However, a suit filed on November 19, 2024, by eight plaintiffs, including Supreme Court lawyer Hari Shankar Jain, said that the mosque was built on the site of a “Harihar Temple” and sought access to the site, which they referred to as a temple. Hari Shankar Jain and his son, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, have been spearheading several such suits, including on the Gyanvapi mosque adjoining the Kashi Vishwanath temple and Shree Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah dispute in Mathura, pressing for reclamation of Hindu temple sites.

On the same day, the civil court in Sambhal allowed an application under Order 26 Rule 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure, appointing an advocate commissioner to conduct a survey of the mosque with photography and videography. The order was passed ex parte, with no notice to the mosque management. Within hours of the order, the survey was conducted, and another survey was carried out five days later, with barely six hours’ notice to the mosque committee, according to the plea.

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The petition alleges that these actions were undertaken in undue haste and without providing the committee with an opportunity to contest the order or seek judicial remedies.

“It is under these extraordinary circumstances that the petitioner is beseeching this Hon’ble Court to kindly intervene and stay the proceedings of Civil Suit No 166 of 2024 pending before the Ld Civil Judge (Senior Division), Sambhal at Chandausi. The hot haste in which the survey was allowed and conducted all within a day and suddenly another survey was conducted with a notice of barely six hours, has given rise to widespread communal tensions and threatens the secular and democratic fabric of the nation,” stated the plea, filed through advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi.

The committee’s petition argues that the case violates the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which prohibits the conversion of a religious place’s character as it existed on August 15, 1947. It also cites provisions under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, which protect historic places of worship from desecration or misuse.

Further, the petition highlights procedural lapses in the trial court’s order, including the absence of any reasons or terms of reference for the survey. It contends that such surveys are being increasingly ordered in disputes over places of worship, potentially inflaming communal passions nationwide.

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“The manner in which survey was ordered in this case and has been ordered in some other cases will have an immediate impact in a number of cases across the country that have been filed recently concerning places of worship where such orders will have a tendency to inflame communal passions, cause law and order problems and damage the secular fabric of the country,” read the plea.

To be sure, while hearing a similar dispute over the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the CJI-led bench on November 22 acknowledged the necessity of determining the legal maintainability of a suit — in light of the Places of Worship Act, 1991 — filed by a group of Hindu women seeking the right to worship Hindu deities within the mosque complex. In this case too, the mosque management committee has argued that all suits by the Hindu side are barred by the 1991 Act, which freezes the religious character of all places of worship as of August 15, 1947, except for the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute that was kept out of the purview of this law by the statute itself.

Notably, a batch of petitions – some seeking to scrap the 1991 Act and some others asking for tight enforcement of that law -- have remained pending before the top court since March 2021.