A Tale of Two Court Orders

The arsenal was used with great success in the recent Kedarnath poll, won by Asha Nautiyal of the BJP, after the party’s humiliating defeats in the Lok Sabha election (June 2024) and the Badrinath poll (July 2024) in Ayodhya/Faizabad had to take.

The Uttarkashi district administration had already conducted an inquiry in September and found that the mosque in question was a legal entity as it was built in 1969 on private land. Funds for construction were raised through individual donations and the mosque was registered with the Waqf Board.

However, for the Hindutva hordes who took out a procession on October 24 and threatened to demolish the mosque, these details were irrelevant and meaningless. They knew full well that the state was an ally, even when there were clashes with the police, an incident in which both protesters and police officers were injured and eight were arrested for incitement to violence.

Uttarkashi district BJP chief Satinder Rana met CM Dhami to complain about the police’s “arrogance”. Dhami made a mandatory re-examination of the land acquisition papers to determine whether there was any “illegality”.

Those arrested were released on bail. The DSP and the SDM Uttarkashi, both of which had strongly opposed the abolition of the government mosquewere sent by Dhami to the state headquarters in Dehradun.

Hindutva groups led by the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) threatened to hold it Mahapanchayat in Uttarakashi on December 1. Fearing that this could lead to more violence, the respondents sought an urgent hearing before the Nainital High Court on November 27, but the court refused permission to hold the court Mahapanchayatand directed the police to ensure that no untoward incident takes place in Uttarakashi.

The issue dates back to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the November 2019 Supreme Court verdict in which a five-judge bench headed by then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, which also included newly retired CJI DY Chandrachud, relied on flimsy logic to finally clear the way for a Ram Mandir to appear at the controversial site of Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid.