New Delhi: The Supreme Court has sought a response from the central and all state governments on a petition filed against government control over Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Buddhist institutions. The top court has asked the governments to file an affidavit within four weeks on the demand for a common law for all religious places, i.e., Uniform Religious Code. A two-member bench of Justice Hemant Gupta has listed the matter for the next hearing after six weeks.

Along with this, the petitions pending before the other bench have been clubbed with the pending petition of Swami Dayanand Saraswati before the same bench. Let us tell you that the petition of advocate Ashwini Upadhyay and others on the same issue is pending before a bench headed by Chief Justice (CJI) UU Lalit. The petitions seeking a Uniform Religious Code have sought that Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs can manage and administer their religious institutions without the intervention of the state government, as is done by Muslims and Christians. In the petitions, the laws of many states including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Telangana have been challenged in the Supreme Court.

The petitioner has argued that the government has taken possession of 58 main temples. This is a direct violation of a constitutional right. This is the law of British times and now why the government does not want to take the church and other religious places under its control? The petitions said that the state governments have the right to maintain and manage Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist religious institutions. But Muslims, Parsis and Christians control their own institutions. It has been said in the petitions that 35 laws exist to control monastic temples, but there is not a single law for mosque, Mazar, dargah and church. There are 4 lakh monasteries and temples under the control of the government, but there is not even one for Masjid, Mazar, Church, and Dargah.

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