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Muslim body rejects Gujarat compensation for shrines

The Islamic Relief Committee-Gujarat (IRCG) has turned down the Narendra Modi government’s offer to pay Rs50,000 each for repairing the 500-odd religious structures damaged during the three-month-long Hindu-Muslim clashes in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat, saying it ‘added insult to injury’.

Describing the amount as ‘pittance’ and ‘mockery’, the IRCG, which has been fighting a legal battle with the state administration for the past 11 years, said in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court that the amount offered for each shrine was “non-commensurate with the loss sustained”. The sworn statement questioned the state government’s sincerity as it had doggedly refused, despite the Gujarat high court’s insistence, to formulate a policy to compensate for damaged shrines till in August last it agreed to shell out funds for repairing the religious structures.

According to IRCG, the compensation given for damage to even houses ran up to Rs500,000 and hence that for the much larger 535 shrines should be substantial. The SC has kept further hearing of the case in March. The IRCG had moved the Gujarat High Court in 2003 seeking directions to the state government to repair 294 mosques and mausoleums targeted by rioters on the ground that the state was the custodian of life and property and had failed miserably to protect the shrines. But the state government had blatantly refused to pick up the tab all these years saying a secular state had no such policy and was under no such obligation till the Gujarat High Court in 2012 lambasted the Modi government for its ‘inaction and negligence’ during the communal riots and ordered it to ‘repair and rehabilitate’ the shrines.

— mahesh@khaleejtimes.com