Shia Waqf Board claims ownership right of Babri Mosque

Uttar Pradesh’s Shia Central Waqf Board on Thursday decided to stake claim on the demolished Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, adding another dimension to the Ram Janmabhoomi Dispute.

The decision to stake claim was taken during the two-day meeting of the Shia Waqf Board which ended in Lucknow on Thursday evening. As first step towards realising its goal, the Shia Board will likely challenge a 1946 order by a Faizabad court that awarded the ownership of Mir Baki Mosque, also known as Babri Masjid, to the Sunni Central Waqf Board.

The Board alleged that previous Shia and Sunni Waqf Boards worked in tandem and wilfully lost the case.

Chairman of the Shia Waqf Board, Wasim Rizvi, claimed that Mir Baki Mosque was a property of Shia Waqf Board, which he said was the rightful owner.

Rizvi also said that he had been asked to intervene in the court case concerning the Ayodhya dispute. The move is likely to create another dispute between the Board and the Uttar Pradesh government as the Board chairperson had earlier been sacked by the Yogi government, before being reinstated by the Allahabad High Court.

"The mosque was built during the reign of Babar by Mir Baqi who, as history states, was a Shia from Persia. It was always a Shia mosque by that virtue, with the Mutawwalis all from the pedigree of Baqi. Only the Imam and Muezzins of the mosque were Sunni who were paid their due by the Shia Mutawwali. Namaz was offered by both Shia and Sunnis," Rizvi further claimed in a statement.

Doubts are also being raised over the possible motivation of Sunni and Shia Boards not having argued the ownership case before the court earlier, or why the question was never raised before for that matter.

Zaffaryab Jilani, the convener of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, said the Shia Waqf Board had never claimed that it had documents to prove ownership right of Babri Mosque.

“If the Shia Board is in possession of any documents, it should make them public,” he said.

The decision by the Shia Board comes a day after CM Yogi Adityanath called on the involved parties to resolve the dispute through dialogue.

During a visit to Ayodhya, Adityanath appealed to all the parties to try resolving the issue amicably so to send across a positive message around the world.

He noted Supreme Court’s recent suggestions to the parties involved in the dispute to come to the negotiating table.

“I also advocate that dialogue is the best option to resolve this vex issue. If we resolve this issue amicably through dialogue a positive signal will be sent across the world as how a complex issue could be solved through dialogue”, Yogi said, adding that solution to this issue would come out from positive politics.