Two sisters claim ownership of land offered for Ayodhya mosque
(Sourced from PTI)
Two Delhi-based sisters moved the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday claiming the ownership of five-acre land allotted to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the construction of a mosque in Ayodhya in accordance with the Supreme Court's verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case. The petition has been filed by Rani Kapoor alias Rani Baluja and Rama Rani Punjabi.
The petition before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad HC was filed in the court's registry and is likely to come up for hearing on February 8. The sisters have said in the writ petition that their father Gyan Chandra Punjabi had come to India after the partition in 1947 from Punjab and settled in Faizabad (now Ayodhya) district.
The sisters have claimed that their father was allotted 28-acre land in Dhannipur village by the Nazul Department for five years which he continued to possess beyond that period.
Later, their father's name was included in the revenue records, the petitioners have said. However, their father's name was struck down from the records against which he filed an appeal before the Additional Commissioner, Ayodhya, which was allowed, they have claimed. The petitioners further claimed that the consolidation officer again removed their father's name from the records during consolidation proceedings.
"Against the order of the consolidation officer, an appeal was preferred before the Settlement Officer of Consolidation, Sadar, Ayodhya, but without considering the said petition, the authorities allotted five-acre of their 28-acre land to the Waqf Board for the construction of the mosque," they said.
Petitioners demanded the authorities be restrained from transferring the land to the Sunni Waqf Board till the pendency of dispute before the settlement officer. To recall, the State Government had allotted five-acre land to the Sunni Waqf Board in Dhannipur for the construction of the mosque in compliance with the SC direction on November 7, 2019, in the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri mosque title suit.
