New Delhi: Amid the preparations for the bhoomi pujan ceremony of a Ram temple in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid once stood, the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board on Wednesday announced that it had set up a trust for the construction of a mosque on the alternate 5-acre land that the Supreme Court awarded the Muslim litigants last year.
In a statement issued by the board, it announced the setting up of the Indo Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust and named nine of its 15 members. The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board will be the founder trustee.
The nine names that have been announced are all office bearers or members of the Waqf board: president Zufar Ahmad Farooqui, vice president Adnan Farrukh Shah, secretary Athar Husain, treasurer Faez Aftab and members Mohammad Junaid Siddiqui, Sheikh Sauduzzaman, Mohammad Rashid and Imran Ahmad. The remaining six members of the Trust will be named soon, the statement said.
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The five-acre land in Dhannipur village of Ayodhya was allotted to the UP Sunni Waqf Board but is still in possession of the agriculture department.
“The Board had received documents related to the land around March 7, but we are yet to get physical possession. We were told that we would get possession within 20-25 days but Covid happened and the process got delayed,” the Board’s chief executive officer Mohammad Shuaib told the Indian Express.
After accepting the land allotted by the state government, the Board had decided to set up a trust to build a mosque, two centres to showcase Indo-Islamic culture, a charitable hospital, and a public library.
The Supreme Court in November last year overturned the 2010 Allahabad high court judgment that had divided the title of the disputed site in Ayodhya between Nirmohi Akhara, Lord Ram and the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board, and awarded the title to diety Ram Virajman, while giving an alternate five-acre land to the Board and adequate representation to Nirmohi Akhara in the Trust formed under the Acquistion of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act, 1993.