New Delhi: The recent spat between Delhi Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government over the demolition of religious structures on unauthorised land has snowballed, with faith, politics, and red tape in the mix.
Sisodia held a press conference last Monday where he said, “The L-G has alleged that I am sitting on the files. I got 19 files to demolish 67 temples, six mazars (shrines), and one gurdwara. I assessed every religious structure. These issues are related to religious sentiments.”
He said the police report in every case shows that devotees will protest against demolition and that it may cause a breach of law and order. Hence, he said, he advised the L-G to change the structure of the projects.
A day later, L-G Saxena alleged that Sisodia was pretending to protect the structures from demolition.
According to Raj Niwas sources that ThePrint spoke to Wednesday, files related to the demolition of unauthorised religious structures were pending with Sisodia, also the Delhi Home minister, due to which highways, flyovers, and government residential projects have been stalled.
They also said that the Delhi government itself had approved the files. “The religious committee under the Home department of the Delhi government recommended the demolition of 23 unauthorised religious structures en route the Delhi-Saharanpur Expressway. On 9 December 2022, Sisodia approved the demolition of nine structures and on 1 February 2023, Kejriwal also approved it,” an official of Raj Niwas told ThePrint.
“It is wrong to create a narrative by holding a press conference after the approval of the files. After approval from the Kejriwal government, the files were okayed by the L-G on 8 February, in which he expressed anger over the delay,” he said.
The L-G had asked for files related to religious structures from Sisodia’s department under Rule 19 (5) of the Transaction of Business Rules. According to the rule, “The Lieutenant Governor may call for papers relating to any proposal or matter in any Department and such requisition shall be complied with by the Secretary to the Department concerned, he shall simultaneously inform the Minister-in-charge of the department of the action taken by him.”
“The government was not deciding on these files. All these were projects of national importance on which work was not progressing, so the L-G asked for the files,” said the official cited above.
Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Sunday after he was questioned for about nine hours in connection with the alleged liquor policy scam. Meanwhile, ThePrint visited seven of the 74 religious structures being sought to be demolished and found that almost all of them are built on government land. While most are located right in the middle of the road, they are all called pracheen (ancient). Local people everywhere were not in favour of the demolition of these structures.
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Temples & mazar
On 29 September 2009, the Supreme Court directed that no unauthorised structure in the name of a temple, church, mosque, or gurdwara can be approved and all such encroachments must be reviewed by the state and Union territory governments.
As L-G Saxena also noted in the 8 February file, which landed in his office after CM Kejriwal’s approval, on 14 March 2022, the Delhi High Court also said that the government is duty-bound to remove unauthorized structures built on public land.
But red tape has remained a stumbling block. Files related to infra projects have been pending for years. Despite the SC order, not much was done to remove religious structures on unauthorised land.
It’s not like religious structures have never been removed to make way for development. On Saturday, a part of the Pracheen Shiva temple and mosque at ITO were demolished by the PWD following the Delhi High Court order. In October last year, the PWD issued a notice to the administration of the temple and the mosque, a waqf board property, asking them to remove the encroachment, following which the matter went to the Delhi High Court.
Last week, the locals also took out a protest march from ITO to Delhi Gate.
Suresh Beri, who is associated with the temple administration, told ThePrint that the officials said the footpath has to be widened for the coming G20 Summit, so the structure on about 3.5 metres of land has been removed. “We even said in the court that we did not encroach but nobody listened to us.”
Earlier, a temple was demolished following a high court order in Vishwas Nagar, Shahdara, East Delhi in 2018.
However, the people running these religious structures point out that they are places of faith and have been around for decades.
The Pracheen Siddha Shri Hanuman temple located in the middle of Chintamani Chowk in Dilshad Garden is said to be more than 40 years old. Temple priest Satish Sharma told ThePrint that meetings have been held with Public Works Department (PWD) officials 3-4 times in about a year.
“We are not against development, but our livelihood is also linked to this. All we want is that we should be given alternate land for the temple somewhere nearby. But the administration has given only verbal assurance,” Sharma said.
The Chintamani Chowk is a commercial area, and there is no residential colony within 200 metres of it. Abhishek Bhardwaj, who has been running a motor parts shop close by for the last two decades, said the temple is built on G.T. Road. “Any unauthorised structure should be removed from there,” he said.
Sisodia had mentioned the police report in his press conference, according to which if these religious structures are removed, law and order will be badly affected.
The temple at Chintamani Chowk comes under the Seemapuri police station. A senior police official told ThePrint that about a year ago, the police headquarters was asked for information about the temple. “We haven’t received the removal order yet. We are a law enforcement agency, when the order comes, we will work to maintain law and order,” he said.
The demolition matter is also stuck due to issues related to land. The matter of a mazar in Hasanpur, Delhi, has been in court for over 30 years. Its manager, Sufi Mohammad Islam Khan, said that someone from Hasanpur village had given this land to his forefathers. He claimed that even in the Delhi Government Gazette of 1986, it has been described as the land of mazar.
Advocate Mohammad Yameen, who dealt with the case of Hasanpur mazar in Patiala House Court, said there is talk of demolishing the religious structure as it is on unauthorised land, but the mazar has revenue records. “The rest of the religious structures do not have revenue records, but our land is not encroached upon. Phir bhi sarkar ki marzi hai, wo kuchh bhi kar sakti hai (Still, the government can do whatever it wants).”
On 24 January 2023, in a meeting headed by Geetika Sharma, the district magistrate of Northeast Delhi, PWD executive engineer V.K. Singh was instructed that three religious structures in Northeast Delhi are in the middle of the road. These are Shri Hanuman Temple, Bhajanpura, mazar at Bhajanpura, and Shri Hanuman Temple near Loni Golchakkar. It was also said that encroachment should be removed as per the order of the Supreme Court. ThePrint has seen a copy of the minutes of the meeting.
The Hanuman temple opposite the MIG flats in Loni, at a walking distance from the one near Golchakkar, is also right in the middle of the road where the PWD is planning to build an underpass. O.P. Verma, president of the MIG Flats Welfare Association, said, “This temple is very old and people have faith in it. If it is demolished, the entire society will hit the road and protest. We will not allow it to be demolished.”
In South Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar, Netaji Nagar, Srinivaspuri, Kasturba Nagar, and Tyagraj Nagar, 49 temples and one mazar have been marked for demolition.
When ThePrint visited Sarojini Nagar Wednesday, it found that these temples have to be demolished because of the central government’s General Pool Residential Accommodation project to redevelop seven such colonies by 2025. There are also about 10 small temples inside the Sarojini Nagar market which are built on government land.
Politics picks up
The issue of the demolition of religious structures has been a hot topic for the past week and a lot of politics is also taking place over it.
“The politics happening on this issue is unfortunate. It was done for obvious vested interests and urge Kejriwal to advise his Cabinet colleagues to avoid politicising issues in the name of religion,” the L-G noted while approving the file on 8 February, a Raj Bhawan official told ThePrint.
A mazar just outside Himachal Bhawan, Mandi House, which is also on the list of unauthorised structures, is said to be 250 years old, said its caretaker Akbar Ali Sabri. In September 2022, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) demolished a part of it, acting on the Supreme Court orders.
Sabri said, “Our livelihood is connected with this. People of all religions come here, and everyone’s faith is connected. Shah Rukh Khan also used to visit this mazar when his show, Fauji, was shot in the Mandi House area.”
AAP MLA from Matia Mahal, Shoaib Iqbal told ThePrint that the tomb is hundreds of years old. “What L-G saheb is saying is nonsense, nothing will happen by his saying. Ye andhergardi hai,” he said.
“Neither temple, nor church, nor mosque, nor gurdwara will be demolished in Delhi. Such a situation will not be allowed to arise,” Iqbal said.
However, the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that such matters cannot be decided on a political level.
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar told ThePrint that Manish Sisodia is embroiled in several controversies these days, including the liquor scam. “To avoid these controversies, he has come up with this shagufa,” he said.
“Manish Sisodia himself is a member of the religious committee. He has recommended the demolition of the structures. And now that the CBI is after him, the timing of his press conference shows that he is making political use of religious sentiments, which is not right,” he said.
However, he said, one should think of other ways before taking such decisions so that people’s religious sentiments are not hurt.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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