The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed a plea filed by the managing committee of Shahi Idgah, seeking clarification of the court's order pertaining to the installation of a statue of Rani Laxmi Bai in the precincts of the Waqf property in the Capital. In the plea, the committee has said that it moved court after the DDA, relying on a single judge HC bench judgment, claimed ownership over the land of Idgah Park, where the mosque is located, and demanded Rs 12 lakh as fee from the committee to organise Ijtema, an annual religious congregation. The DDA served a notice to the committee in this regard on February 11, the plea added. Last September, the single judge bench, relying on Delhi Waqf Board’s submissions, had held that the area inside the Idgah boundary – comprising parks and open grounds – belongs to the DDA and that the committee’s claim that the entire property within the Idgah walls belongs to Shahi Idgah “cannot be sustained in law”. The committee has argued that the single judge’s finding was beyond the purview of the earlier round of litigation where the committee was opposing the installation of the Rani Laxmi Bai’s statue in the Idgah park, and that the issue was not seriously adjudicated. It added that such adjudication would be in the purview of the Waqf Tribunal. The single judge’s order was subsequently appealed against before a division bench, where the latter upheld the single judge’s order. On Friday, a bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela ruled that the division bench’s order “does not require any clarification”. “You are asking us to interpret our order. Take recourse to appropriate legal remedy challenging the notice,” the bench orally remarked to the committee’s counsel, adding that a challenge to the DDA notice would allow the petitioner to canvas all grounds.
