The plea challenging certain provisions of 1991 law which prohibits filing of a lawsuit to reclaim a place of worship or seek a change in its character that prevailed on August 15,1947 will now be heard by the Supreme Court on September 9.
A bench by Chief Justice N V Ramana today took note of the submissions by the senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi that the plea against some provisions of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 have been deleted six times from the list of business.
This time it is likely to be listed on September 9.The senior lawyer representing the matter said that please ensure that it be not deleted from the list,”
The Apex court on March 12 last year had sought a response from the Centre on the PIL filed by lawyer and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay on the issue.
This year on July 29,a bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud and comprising of Justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli refused to entertain six other pleas separately on the issue and asked the petitioners to file intervention applications in the pending PIL filed by Upadhyay.
The plea by Updhyay, says that the 1991 law creates an “arbitrary and irrational retrospective cut-off date” of August 15, 1947 for maintaining the character of the places of worship or pilgrimage against encroachment done by “fundamentalist-barbaric invaders and law-breakers”.
The PIL talks about sections 2, 3, 4 of the 1991 Act should be set aside as they take away the right of judicial remedy to reclaim a place of worship of any person or a religious group.