Andhra HC stays temple work at Charminar

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday ordered a status quo on the temple abutting the historical Charminar and made it made it clear that any sort of construction activity which causes threat to the 400-year old monument will not be allowed.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday ordered a status quo on the temple abutting the historical Charminar and made it made it clear that any sort of construction activity which causes threat to the 400-year old monument will not be allowed.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice P C Ghose and Justice Vilas V Afzulpurkar gave the order while dealing with two Public Interest Litigations (PILs) filed by corporators belonging to the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party seeking direction for stoppage of the expansion works of the Bhagya Lakshmi temple. The court directed the state government to take steps to ensure that a status quo is implemented.  

Appearing for the petitioners, senior counsel Bojja Tarakam told the court that the temple committee had undertaken expansion works by making holes in one of the pillars of the monument. He added that on the intervening night of October 30 and 31, the temple authorities had also erected scaffoldings on which tin sheets were being laid. They also said the expansion works were causing tension in the city and people from a particular community were protesting against it.

However, D Prakash Reddy, senior counsel appearing for the temple committee, said that they had not caused any damage to the structure and did not intend to expand the temple. They said that the committee had only been trying to repair to the leaking roof of 150-year old temple. Both the parties presented photographs before the bench to prove their claims.

After seeing the photos, Justice Ghose said he had visited the temple during Dasara and had noticed changes to it. Directing the authorities and the temple committee to main status quo as on October 30, the bench told the respondents (state chief secretary, principal secretary to home, director general of police, police commissioner, Hyderabad district collector, director of archaeology and Bhagya Lakshmi temple committee) to file their counter affidavits on the plea within four weeks and posted the matter for hearing after five weeks.