Breaking: Kerala High Court Orders Government To Close Down Religious Places And Prayer Halls That Are Functioning Illegally And Without Obtaining Permission

The Kerala High Court recently, while disallowing a petition to convert a commercial building to a Muslim place of worship, issued a direction to the State Government to close down religious places and prayer halls that were functioning illegally and without permission. Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan directed the Chief Secretary of State of Kerala and the State Police Chief to issue necessary orders / circulars directing all the officers concerned to see that there were no illegal functioning of any religious places and prayer halls without obtaining permission from the competent authorities as per the Manual of Guidelines and if any such religious place or prayer hall is functioning without necessary permission, to close down the same immediately. The Chief Secretary of the State of Kerala was further directed to issue necessary orders/circulars directing the competent authority as per the Manual of Guidelines to consider each application to start religious places and prayer halls strictly and the approval can be granted only in appropriate cases. In such orders, it also ought to be mentioned that that the distance to the nearest similar religious place/prayer hall is the one of the criteria while considering the application for religious places and prayer halls.Additionally, the Court further directed the Chief Secretary of the State of Kerala to issue a separate circular/order prohibiting change of category of a building to a religious place/ prayer hall except in inevitable circumstances and in the rarest of rare case, and that also only after getting report from the Police and Intelligence ascertaining the ground realities of that particular place.The Court further remarked, "God is there everywhere. If the Muslim community want to conduct their 'prayers' in the mosque itself, they can go to the nearest mosque instead of constructing a new prayer hall near to their residence", while noting that the State of Kerala was "exhausted with religious places and prayer halls and we are not in a position to allow any new religious places, and prayer halls except in the rarest of rare cases".The directions were issued by the Court when a petition was filed in the Court seeking to convert a commercial building to a Muslim place of worship, in an area were there were already 36 Mosques within 5 kilometers radius of the said building. The same was sought on the ground that 'five times prayer' is necessary for a Muslim and thus, a prayer hall within the vicinity was a necessity for every Muslim. The disputed property was given to the petitioner-society by its orginal owners free of cost. When the property was still under the ownership of the original owners, they had commenced the construction of a building. However, the 6th respondent in the instant case, filed a writ petition apprehending that the property owners are constructing a religious prayer hall without permit from the panchayat and the competent authorities.Thereby, the Court had previously directed the Sub Inspector of Police, Pookkottumpadam Police Station to ensure that no religious practices are carried out in the subject property if the building is constructed without permission from the appropriate authorities as provided in proviso to Rule 7(8) of the Kerala Panchayat Building Rules, 2011.The counsels for the petitioner, Advocates P. Samsudin, M. Anuroop, Shyam Nair, and Lira A.B., submitted that alteration and conversion of buildings have been defined in the Kerala Panchayat Building Rules, 2019, and brought the attention of the Court to Rule 2(1)(f) and 2(1)(x) of the aforementioned Rules to state that conversion and alteration is possible under the same. It was further submitted that as per Rule 4(3) and Rule 5(4) of the Rules, 2019, the Secretary of the Panchayat can change the occupancy of an existing building from one group to another after getting permission from the competent authority. In this light, it was argued that the order passed by the District Collector was unsustainable. The counsels for the petitioner, by relying on the verses of the Holy Quran attempted to substantiate the argument that a Mosque/prayer hall was necessary within the vicinity of the members of the Muslim community, since they had to offer 'five times prayer' everyday. The relevant portion of the 'Hadees' of Prophet which was compiled by Imam Nawawi by producing a malayalam version of the same by Mr.Abdulla Nadvi, was also relied on, along with Chapter 191 of the above book to highlight the importance of the 'five times prayer' to the Muslim community.When the writ had come up for the consideration of the instant Court, the Court had directed the District Collector to file a statement regarding the averments in the Writ Petition, and a detailed report had been filed by the same. The Counsels for the respondents, Advocates Krishna Prasad, A.K. Haridas, and N. Anand, and the Senior Government Pleader Deepa Narayanan, submitted that although...

Breaking: Kerala High Court Orders Government To Close Down Religious Places And Prayer Halls That Are Functioning Illegally And Without Obtaining Permission

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