Jalgaon Collector bars entry to mosque, HC to hear plea next on July 18

The dispute has landed in the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court with the Jumma Masjid Trust Committee filing a petition against the July 11 restraining order issued by Jalgaon District Collector Aman Mittal.

Confirming that the petition was filed on July 13, Advocate S S Kazi, who is representing the Jumma Masjid Trust Committee, said the court held the first hearing on the same day and the second the next day. He said the court directed that a copy of the petition be served on the respondents and fixed the next hearing on July 18.

Incidentally, District Collector Mittal is also scheduled to hold a hearing with the parties involved on July 18 to resolve the dispute. “We have not yet passed our final order. In the first hearing, we passed our interim order for law and order purposes. The second hearing on July 13 went on for over two hours. Representatives of the Wakf Board and the mosque trust were present and heard. We have now called for our next hearing on July 18,” Mittal told The Indian Express.

Although Hindu groups have been staking claim to the structure since the 1980s, saying that it is associated with the Pandavas who spent some years in exile in the area, the latest situation arose from an application submitted by the Pandavwada Sangharsh Samiti to the District Collector on May 18.

Prasad Madhusudan Dantwate, president of the Pandavwada Sangharsh Samiti, which was set up with the aim to reclaim the structure, submitted the application, demanding that the “illegal construction” of the mosque be removed since the ancient monument resembled a temple.

On July 11, Mittal passed the interim order, which barred the entry of general public into the mosque and asked the trustees to hand over the keys of the mosque to district authorities. The order, however, allowed two persons to pray there on a daily basis to ensure that sanctity of the mosque was maintained until the final order was passed.

“While the keys of the mosque have now been collected by the tehsildar, the two persons who want to offer their prayers can collect the keys from the government authorised personnel present there,” Mittal said.

In his petition filed before the court, Altaf Khan, president of the Jumma Masjid Trust Committee, has said, “The learned Collector was not in a mood to hear anything from the petitioner and without giving any opportunity to the petitioner on 11.07.2023, the learned Collector, Jalgaon, passed an order under Section 144 and 145 of Code of Criminal Procedure.”

The earliest available record of the mosque is dated October 31, 1861 – under the name ‘Jumma Masjid’ – in the registrar of alienated villages and lands of Erandol taluka.

The Maharashtra Wakf Board has also taken exception to the Collector’s order, stating that the mosque has been a registered property under the state Wakf board since 2009.

Wakf Board CEO Moin Tehsildar has written to the district administration, also challenging the Collector’s authority to carry out the hearing in the matter. “Since this is a Wakf registered property, the decision of the District Collector to issue this restraining order was not in his purview. The Collector has the authority to handle law and order matters but does not have the authority to carry out a hearing on this subject, as per the Wakf act provisions,” he said.