No More Gods on Roads: SC

Centre Given Time To Formulate Guidelines By September 29

New Delhi: All the religious places of worship which have proliferated on public land including roads may remain there. In a important development on Friday, the SC acknowledged the difficulty of governments to remove religious places of all kinds that have mushroomed on public land. But, it found nothing holy about them and asked the Centre to formulate guidelines to prevent such encroachments in future.

Aware that it would be well nigh impossible for the authorities to demolish the existing ones even if they caused serious traffic bottlenecks given the sensitivity attached to religious places, a Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and M K Sharma took a prospective approach towards the problem and told Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam the need for framing guidelines to strictly prohibit religious places from occupying public land unauthorisedly.

Subramaniam assured the Bench that the Centre would take up the issue in right earnest with the states and possibly frame guidelines prohibiting religious places from encroaching on roads and public places. The Bench asked the Centre to file an affidavit by September 29 intimating the progress made on the contentious problem.

Interestingly, the proposal for framing guidelines came on an appeal filed in 2006 by the Centre challenging a Gujarat high court order directing the Modi government to remove all religious structures, without any discrimination, that were encroaching on public land across the state. The SC had stayed the HC directive on May 4, 2006.

When the authorities took steps pursuant to the HC order in Vadodara and started demolishing a Dargah right in the middle of a road, violence and riots broke out and the Army had to stage a flag march to bring the situation under control. According to a PIL before the HC, there were 1,200 temples and 260 Islamic shrines encroaching on public spaces according to a survey conducted by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

PROSPECTIVE APPROACH

• Top court says all the religious places of worship which have proliferated on public land including roads may remain there
• Acknowledged difficulty of governments to remove religious places of all kinds that have mushroomed on public land
• Says there is a need for framing guidelines to strictly prohibit religious places from occupying public land unauthorisedly