Two Delhi sisters claim Ayodhya mosque land

Ten days after foundation laying ceremony of Dhannipur mosque in Ayodhya, two Delhi-based sisters have claimed the ownership of 5 acres of mosque land challenging the allotment at the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court.

Five acres of land was allotted to the Central Sunni Waqf Board by the Yogi Adityanath government at Dhannipur and Raunahi villages in Ayodhya for the construction of the mosque on the directions of the Supreme Court.

Rani Kapoor alias Rani Baluja and her sister Rama Rani Punjabi claimed in the petition that their father Gyan Chandra Punjabi was allotted 28 acres of land in village Dhannipur by the Nazul department for five year lease when he came to India after partition in 1947 and settled in Faizabad (now Ayodhya).

They further claimed that his name was recorded in revenue records and he continued to have possession of the land even after expiry of the lease. The 5 acres land allotted to the Central Sunni Waqf Board by the state government on the directions of the Supreme Court in village

Dhannipur is part of that 28 acres land owned by their father, said the two sisters in the petition.

They prayed in the petition to cancel the allotment of 5 acres of land to Central Sunni Waqf Board as they are the real owners of the allotted land.

The petition by the two sisters is likely to come up for hearing on February 8.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF), entrusted with the task of constructing the mosque on the allotted land, has already laid foundation stone of the mosque on the Republic Day on January 26.

“We have nothing to do with this petition. The matter is between the petitioners, state government and local administration who identified and allotted this 5 acres of land in Village Dhannipur and Raunahi in Ayodhya to the Board on the directions of the honourable Supreme Court,” the IICF Secretary Athar Husain told the FPJ.

Sources, however, claim that the petition by the two sisters may cause unnecessary delay in the construction of the mosque, depending on how the proceedings go on at the Lucknow High Court in the case.