'Misconceived': Gujarat HC Dismisses PIL Seeking Ban on Loudspeakers for Azaan
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: The Gujarat high court on Tuesday (November 28) dismissed a PIL reportedly seeking a ban on the use of loudspeakers in mosques for azaan (the call to prayer).
A two-judge division bench comprising the court's Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha Mayee said the PIL did not do enough to scientifically make its case that azaan using loudspeakers was resulting in hazardous levels of noise pollution.
“This is a wholly misconceived PIL. We fail to understand as to how the human voice making azaan through loudspeakers could achieve the decibels to the extent of creating noise pollution causing health hazard for [the] public at large,” Chief Justice Agarwal said according to Bar and Bench.
Dharmendra Prajapati, the man who filed the PIL, said that he objected to azaan playing five times a day near the hospital he worked in and that it caused disturbance to patients, the Times of India reported.
According to legal news website LiveLaw, Chief Justice Agarwal asked the petitioner's counsel what they believed azaan's decibel levels tend to be, following which the counsel said it exceeded the ‘decibel limit’.
“Your DJ creates a lot of pollution. We are not entertaining this kind of PIL. It is a faith and practice going on [for] years together and it is a moment of only five to 10 minutes. Azaan goes on for less than 10 minutes,” the chief justice was quoted as saying.
When Prajapati's counsel argued that azaan happened multiple times a day unlike aarti in temples, the chief justice asked according to Bar and Bench if aarti did not likewise create disturbance.
“So in your temples, the morning aarti with those drums and music that starts early morning. It doesn't cause any noise or disturbance to anyone? Can you say that the noise of that ghanta [bells] and ghadiyal [gong] stays within temple premises and doesn't percolate out of the premises?”
She added that noise pollution was a “scientific issue” and asked the petitioner if scientific methods of measuring noise pollution could corroborate his argument.
“If you can argue this, we will permit you. But you are not arguing this. You have not made out any base in the writ petition. Where is the pleading with regard to the decibels? Where is the pleading with regard to the scientific method of assessment of noise pollution in the area?” the court's order on the matter said according to LiveLaw.
It concluded by saying that “We fail to understand as to how the human voice making azaan through loudspeaker in the morning could achieve the decibel [level] to the extent of creating noise pollution causing health hazards to the public at large,” according to LiveLaw.
“The measurements/assessment of noise pollution with the raising of decibel of sound is a scientific method wherein the sound created by a particular instrument etc can be measured to see that the sound caused by it is reaching beyond decibel permissible limit.
“No such foundation has been laid in the petition to demonstrate that noise created by azaan for minutes at a stretch at different hours of the day would raise the level of the sound to cause noise pollution,” it added.
The bench then dismissed the PIL.
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