In an ef­fec­tive stop­page of Odisha gov­ern­men­t’s de­mo­li­tion drive around Ja­gan­nath Tem­ple in Puri, In­di­a’s apex court seeks a sta­tus re­port on de­mo­li­tions car­ried out so far. The court ex­pressed se­ri­ous con­cern at the de­mo­li­tion of cen­turies-old Mutts.  Sig­nif­i­cantly, the Supreme Court bench specif­i­cally asked the Odisha gov­ern­ment not to touch places vis­ited by Guru Nanak.

AFTER HEAR­ING COUN­SELS of In­dic Col­lec­tive and tak­ing into ac­count the re­port of the court-ap­pointed Am­i­cus Curie in the hear­ing of the Hindu Mutts de­mo­li­tion case out­side the Lord Ja­gan­nath Tem­ple in Puri, the Supreme Court di­rected the Odisha gov­ern­ment to give a sta­tus re­port on the de­mo­li­tions that have al­ready been car­ried out and posted the mat­ter for 22 Oc­to­ber.

Putting an ef­fec­tive stop to the de­mo­li­tion drive of the Odisha gov­ern­ment, the court re­port­edly ob­served that the con­sent of Shankaracharya of Puri Peeth, Swami Sri Nis­cha­lananda Saraswati Ma­haraj and the Se­vay­ats is nec­es­sary be­fore any de­mo­li­tion is car­ried out.

When the writ Pe­ti­tion (C) No. 649/​2018, re­lat­ing to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Ja­gan­nath Puri Tem­ple was taken up by Jus­tice Arun Mishra, the re­port of Am­i­cus cu­riae Se­nior Ad­vo­cate Shri Ran­jit Ku­mar on the on­go­ing de­mo­li­tion drive in Puri was con­sid­ered and the bench ex­pressed se­ri­ous reser­va­tions with the de­mo­li­tion of cen­turies-old Mutts by the Odisha gov­ern­ment.

The Bench ob­served that even if the Mutts were in a di­lap­i­dated con­di­tion, given their re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance and his­tor­i­cal value, they can­not be de­mol­ished.  The Bench di­rected Odisha Govt to com­mit re­sources to the re­set­tle­ment of af­fected par­ties be­fore tak­ing any fur­ther steps with re­spect to de­mo­li­tion.

Coun­sels of the Ma­hants re­quested the Court to di­rect the State gov­ern­ment to con­sult with Ma­hants prior to tak­ing any fur­ther ac­tion, to which the Bench agreed and asked the Odisha gov­ern­ment to con­sult Ma­hants who are stake­hold­ers as Math­adi­pathis.

“Struc­tures rem­i­nis­cent of Guru Nanak’s visit and place of stay must not be de­mol­ished.” 

Supreme Court of In­dia

Call­ing the at­ten­tion of the Odisha state gov­ern­ment to­wards de­mo­li­tion of age-old struc­tures, the three-judge bench orally ob­served that, “Struc­tures rem­i­ni­scient of Guru Nanak’s visit and place of stay must not be de­mol­ished.”

This puts an ef­fec­tive stop on the de­mo­li­tion drive of the Odisha gov­ern­ment and the gov­ern­ment will do well to con­sider mak­ing of a cor­ri­dor around the tem­ple with­out de­struc­tion of her­itage build­ings and take nec­es­sary steps to strengthen old struc­tures with the ex­per­tise of con­ser­va­tion­ists.