Manas Dasgupta
Ahmedabad, May 7
The Gujarat High Court has questioned the BJP government in the state why it was spending public funds only for the development of the Hindu religious sites ignoring the important centres of other religions. The court has directed the government to submit a list of important religious sites in the state of all the religions by June 14.
The order was issued on a public interest litigation filed by Minority Co-ordination Committee convener Mujahid Nafees who questioned the secular credentials of the Rupani government, which was spending public funds only for the development of the Hindu religious centres through the Gujarat Pavitra Yatradham Vikas Board.
The board was constituted in 1995 when first BJP CM Keshubhai Patel took office mainly to provide better facilities to the pilgrims, including roads, board, lodging, public toilets, drinking water, etc. for the convenience of pilgrims.
The board, of which the CM was the ex-officio chairman, initially picked up six famous religious centres in the state — Somnath, Dwarka, Ambaji, Dakor, Girnar and Palitana — which were declared as the “Pavitra Yatradham” and allocated Rs 24 lakh to create better amenities.
The petitioner pointed out that in the past two decades, the number of sites declared by the state government as “Pavitra Yatradham” had gone up to 358, but these were all only Hindu sites and not a single important pilgrimage centre of Islam, Christian, Buddhist or other minority religions had been included.
The petitioner pointed out that in addition to ignoring minority religions, the state-owned board also deviated from its path of improving the passenger amenities and spent public funds to pay electricity bills of some temples.
The petitioner pointed out that he had obtained details of the board’s spending from the government under the Right to Information Act.
He also confronted the government but failed to elicit response following which he moved the High Court.
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2LwV5aP
via Today’s News Headlines
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