Maharaja Kumari Krishna Priya, the daughter of Kashi Naresh Vibhuti Narayan Singh, the current titular head of the erstwhile Royal Family of Kashi, has filed an Intervention Application in the Supreme Court’s case challenging the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 (the Act).

Krishna Priya claimed in her application that because the former Ruler of the Princely State of Kashi was the Chief Patron of all Temples in Kashi, she has the authority to challenge the Act on the basis of violations of Articles 25, 26, 29, and 32 of the Constitution.

The plea stated, “….it(the Act) deprives directly affected parties from approaching Courts of law to reclaim occupied religious sites through an evidence-based judicial process.”

After Krishna Priya, a Vaishnavaite man who is member of the Tuluva Vellalar clan that reconstructed the Kapaleeshwara Temple in Chennai after it was destroyed by the Portuguese, have also sought to intervene in the matter before the Supreme Court.

Krishna Priya has argued that because the Head of the Kashi Royal Family is traditionally recognised as the authority on religious aspects of the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir, his family has the duty and right to seek the reclamation of the disputed illegal structure known as the Razia Mosque, which is the original site of the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir.

According to the suit, the Royal family also wants the disputed unlawful construction known as the Dhaurahra Mosque, which was built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after the destruction of the Bindu Madhav Mandir in 1682 at the Panchaganga Ghat in Varanasi.

The applicants claim that the Places of Worship Act was rushed through without any prior consultation with stakeholders, with the deliberate objective of not subjecting the Act’s contents and ramifications to a democratic and informed debate. The places of worship Act was inacted to preserve the religious sites with the religious nature they consisted from the independence. The act excluded thousands of religious disputed structures in which community claim has been a normal thing.

The intervention application by Krishna Priya stated, “…the Impugned Act is a textbook instance of a legislation that was passed in the most undemocratic of manners possible, without any regard for the fundamental rights of affected parties,….After all, apart from rights under Articles 25, 29 and 32 of the Constitution of India, the issue of reclamation of religious sites also involves the question of title over the immovable property on which such sites are located. Perforce, stakeholders, it is submitted, have the legitimate expectation to be consulted before they are deprived of their ability to assert and enforce such rights”.

The applicants argue that the impact and import of the contested Act must be viewed and understood in the context of Bharat’s history, which has seen two successive waves of settler colonisation, Middle Eastern followed by European, resulting in incalculable destruction of its religion, culture, heritage, knowledge production and dissemination structures, and economy, among other things.

The plea further reads as, “The Act is a textbook example of oikophobia/oikomisia and misautogeny i.e., hatred or contempt for one’s own people and culture.”

The petitioners have also moved to intervene in the case before the Supreme Court, claiming that the Places of Worship Act prevents the truth from being laid bare by constitutional procedures before a court of law through legally acceptable evidence.

Several petitions have been filed against the provisions of the Places of Worship Act before the Supreme Court. Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay (Main petitioner), Advocate Chandra Shekhar, former Member of Parliament Chintamani Malviya, Swami Jeetendra Saraswatee, Devkinandan Thakurji, and Anil Kabootra are among the petitioners.

On July 29, the Court asked the petitioners, who later challenged the provisions of the Places of Worship Act 1991, to file intervention applications in the case that was already pending before the court.

Aside from that, Jamait Ulama-I-Hind filed an impleadment application in Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay’s petition in June 2022. In addition, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has filed an application contesting the challenge.

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