The Indian Supreme Court has blocked trial courts from registering any new suits against places of worship until they get further orders from the top court.
The directions came as the top court heard petitions challenging the Places of Worship Act, 1991, which prohibits conversion of any place of worship. It also provides “for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August, 1947”.
In pending cases, the courts would refrain from any “effective interim or final order” until further orders, according to a bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. V. Viswanathan.
“We are examining the vires, contours, and the ambit of the 1991 Act,” the bench said, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. The court asked the central government to file its reply to the pleas in four weeks.
The top court’s order has come amid Hindu groups filing back-to-back petitions in the courts claiming prominent mosques were built on the former site of temples in the recent past.
A local court recently accepted a petition to survey a famous 13th-century shrine of a Muslim saint in Ajmer in western Rajasthan state.
