Nagina Masjid in Gujarat’s Dahod demolished for Smart City project

The demolition was part of a mega drive currently underway in Dahod town to make way for the Smart City Project.

The Smart City authorities had asked the masjid committee to produce land record documents by Friday. However, the masjid committee, which also moved the Gujarat High Court, failed to provide any documents until the designated time, according to officials.

An old temple dedicated to Lord Ganesh was demolished earlier this week. 

“The masjid trust had sought time on their own until Friday to produce relevant records of the land. The administration conceded to their request but on Friday the records they brought were not reliable,” Dahod Superintendent of Police Balram Meena, who is part of the district-level committee for the implementation of the Smart City project, told The Indian Express on Saturday.

“On Friday evening, a meeting was held between the members of the masjid with sub-divisional magistrate, Prant Officer, chief officer of municipality and the DySP, where the members of the Trust agreed to evacuate the premises on being given the option to demolish the structure on their own. We did not have to enter the premises as they had already evacuated the structure for demolition… The deployment will remain but we do not anticipate any trouble as the members of the community did not come out to protest while the demolition was being executed,” Meena added.

“We had been informed by the administration on Monday that the documents will have to be produced by Friday otherwise the demolition will be done after the Jumma prayers… The high court, too, did not grant us relief and so on Friday afternoon, we were told to remove our belongings. When the authorities had razed 6 feet of the compound earlier this week, we had already removed some of our important things,” a member of the masjid committee told The Indian Express.

Owing to the ongoing summer vacation at Gujarat High Court, the petition remains to be registered. It is learnt that the Trust will be approaching the court seeking that status quo ante be maintained now following the demolition, as the mosque was a Waqf property and such action would have also required approval of the Waqf Board.

The Nagina Masjid Dahod Trust had told the Gujarat High Court that the mosque is a “deemed Waqf” property. It had added that the mosque had been standing since 1926 in a part of the trust’s land, which was registered in 1953. The Trust also told the court that some of the shops, which have now been demolished, on other parts of the land were given on rent by the Trust and Waqf over the years.

In their petition before Gujarat High Court, the Trust had pointed out that notices under the Gujarat Municipalities Act were issued to alleged encroaching shops near the mosque that were demolished on May 15. But the authorities also started demolishing nearby shops which were in the ownership of the petitioner Trust “and were not served with any notice”.

No official notice was also issued to the Trust for the demolition of the mosque, as per the Trust, and they were only informally informed by the authorities that “petitioner and others may remove all the religious books, Quran and other revered articles from the Masjid till Friday 19/05/2023 since after Friday evening prayers the Masjid will be demolished”.

The demolition was part of a mega drive currently underway in Dahod town to make way for the Smart City Project.

The Trust further submitted that the mosque is protected and cannot be demolished, more particularly in view of provisions under the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991. It added that principles of natural justice have not been adhered to and due process of law has not been followed since the Trust was not issued notice by the local civic authority as is stipulated under the Act.

The Trust also said that since the masjid is a Waqf property, no action could have been undertaken without the approval of the Waqf Board. Notably, Gujarat does not have a functioning Waqf Board at present.

While District Collector Harshit Gosavi was unavailable for comment, officials of the administration said that hydraulic soil excavator machines had been deployed to remove the debris from the structure and clear the ground in an ongoing activity on Saturday morning.

The Dahod Smart City committee had begun demolitions of several private structures located on major roads of the town – Godhra Road, Godi Road, Palika Road, Station Road, and also the Padav area of the town – on May 11, five days after serving the eviction notices. An old temple dedicated to Lord Ganesh was demolished earlier this week.