Trust overseeing mosque construction in Ayodhya defers plan for hospital
Speaking to The Indian Express Sunday, IICF secretary Athar Hussain said, “We have put on hold the project for the hospital because of lack of funds. The hospital project was to cost around Rs 300 crore and we have put that on hold for now."
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Site allotted for mosque at Dhannipur village. (Express File Photo by Vishal Srivastav)
The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF) Trust, formed to oversee the construction of a mosque and other structures at the alternate site in Ayodhya, Sunday announced it has deferred the construction of a hospital at the site over a lack of funds.
The IICF Trust was supposed to build the mosque and community facilities, including a hospital, a community kitchen and an Indo-Islamic cultural research centre, at the 5-acre plot at Dhannipur village in Ayodhya. The land was given to the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Speaking to The Indian Express Sunday, IICF secretary Athar Hussain said, “We have put on hold the project for the hospital because of lack of funds. The hospital project was to cost around Rs 300 crore and we have put that on hold for now. We will go ahead with the construction of the mosque as soon as it can be done so that at least some work can start at the site. But as far as the hospital is concerned, we have put it on hold because we couldn’t garner funds”.
Hussain said so far, Rs 50 lakh has been collected in donations for the whole project.
“For now, we will submit a revised plan without the hospital in it. We will only include the mosque in the drawings so that the development fee is reduced. The development fee for the whole project, including the hospital, was running into crores. Hence, we have decided to put on hold the hospital project for now. We still hope that we can collect more funds in the future and we build a hospital over there too,” added Hussain.
In May 2021, IICF had submitted the drawings of the maps of the proposed mosque and other projects to the Ayodhya Development Authority.
Asked when the construction of the mosque is scheduled to start, he said, “We hope that happens soon. We are working on it”.
On November 9, 2019, the Supreme Court in its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case had ordered to give the disputed site for the construction of the temple and granted five acres of land in Ayodhya to the Muslims for the construction of a mosque.
The district administration had given the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board land in the Dhannipur village under the Sohawal tehsil, some 25 km from the Ram Temple site, in compliance with the verdict.
The IICF Trust was formed by the Waqf Board in July 2020 to oversee the construction of the mosque.
The construction of the mosque in Dhannipur is yet to take off, even as the Ram Temple is in its final stages and is slated to be open to the public very soon.
Zufar Farooqui, the chief trustee of the foundation and also the chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board, told The Indian Express Sunday their focus will be on the mosque. “We will focus on the mosque project for now, while putting on hold the construction of the hospital. We will soon hold a meeting of the IICF to discuss the strategy for the collection of funds and donations,” said Farooqui.
“It is unfair to compare the project of the mosque with the temple. Preparations for the temple have been going on since 1983-84. We got to know about the construction of the mosque only in 2019. The project will take a lot of time, and we can’t give a timeline for it. It may take 10-20 years. We are in no rush because there is no pressure from the community too for the construction. We are trying our best,” he added.
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