BJP's Vinay Katiyar says no room for mosque in Ayodhya, asks Muslims to migrate from district: 'Ram ka mandir hai, wahi chalega'

Former BJP MP and Ayodhya case litigant Vinay Katiyar. (File: PTI)

Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former MP Vinay Katiyar, a prominent name associated with the Ram Mandir movement, has sparked a controversy with his remarks that Muslims in Ayodhya should migrate to districts "across the Saryu" and that there was no place for a mosque in the 'Ram Nagari'.

Katiyar's remark came in response to media queries on the rejection of the Dhannipur mosque plan by the Ayodhya Development Authority apparently over pending clearances from some departments.

"Ayodhya Nagari ke andar Dhannipur... iska koi matlab nahin. Is jile ke andar kyon rahen… woh log jayen nadi ke us paar chale jaeyen, Gonda, Basti chale jayen. Yahan kya kam hai unka? Yahan Ram ka mandir hai, wahi kaam karega (There is no meaning of Dhannipur in Ayodhya. Muslims in this district should leave and go across the Saryu river to districts like Gonda and Basti. What work do they have here? There is Ram Temple here, which is the only thing relevant here)," Katiyar said, according to The Indian Express.

The remarks sparked a political controversy with Faizabad MP and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Awadhesh Prasad slamming Katiyar, saying the country belongs to people of all faiths. "Vinay Katiyar is a senior BJP leader but he is being sidelined and ignored in the Modi government. He has thus made these remarks out of disappointment and frustration," Prasad said.

In its landmark verdict on November 9, 2019, in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case in the wake of Babri Masjid's demolition, a five-judge Supreme Court Constitution bench unanimously ruled that the 2.77 acres of disputed land in Ayodhya will be handed over to the Ram Temple trust and a 5-acre plot will be allotted to the Sunni Waqf Board in a "suitable, prominent place in Ayodhya".

Consequently, in 2020, the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government allotted 5 acre of land to the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board in Dhannipur on the outskirts of Ayodhya town, following which the latter formed Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust to build the mosque there.

The Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA) stated in response to a recent RTI query that the application submitted by the Dhannipur mosque trust was rejected due to lack of clearances from various departments.

ADA officials said they have an online application filing system for approval of maps and that if all the documents are not submitted in time, the application is automatically rejected. They said such applications could again be submitted with required documents.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust's chief trustee Zufar Ahmad Faruqi, who is also the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board chairman, told The Indian Express they are in the process of working out a new layout of the proposed mosque in Dhannipur, which would be readied for making a fresh application in the next few months. He declined to respond to Katiyar's remarks.

Notably, Iqbal Ansari, one of the main litigants in the Ayodhya dispute case, advised the Muslim community to not react to Katiyar's remarks. "It is all about politics and we should stay away from it. It would not yield any results nor benefit anyone," he said.

"India is a country of people of different faiths, including Hindus and Muslims. Gods of different religions and sects are worshipped in Ayodhya for ages and everyone respects them all, barring a few people. All I know is that someone who truly follows any religion would never harm another religion," he added.