Trust set up to build Temple of Ram, says India premier

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI (AA) - A trust has been set up to build a Temple of Ram in northern India, at the site of a historic mosque torn down by a mob in 1992, India’s prime minister announced Wednesday.

The Cabinet approved the trust for construction of the temple, Narendra Modi told Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, citing a controversial Supreme Court ruling from last November.

Modi said that the trust would be responsible for the temple’s construction in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.

The announcement came on Feb. 5, Kashmir Solidarity Day, this year held under the shadow of New Delhi's decision last August to strip Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir of its special status.

Last November India’s Supreme Court handed the historic site of the 16th-century Babri Mosque to Hindus to build the temple following a prolonged legal battle.

The court also ruled that a “suitable” 20,234-square-meter (five-acre) plot of land would be allotted to the Sunni Waqf Board either by the central government or provincial government to build a new mosque.

Built in 1528 under the first Mughal Emperor Babur, in 1992 the grand mosque in Uttar Pradesh was demolished by a mob of radical Hindus. Hindus claimed one of their gods, Lord Ram, was born at the site of the mosque.

Though a body of top Islamic clerics filed a petition against the November Supreme Court ruling, the court dismissed all petitions challenging its decision.