Soon after India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a trust for Ram temple construction, the country’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh’s right wing government has approved a proposal to allot five acres of land to the Sunni Waqf Board in Ayodhya for construction of a mosque as directed by the Supreme court, Indian media outlets reported.
The proposal was approved by the Indian cabinet on Wednesday.
The proposed land for the mosque is in Raunahi, about 20 kilometres from Ayodhya on the Lucknow-Ayodhya highway.
The government spokesman said that the proposal was in compliance with the Supreme Court verdict on November 9 that said that five acres of land is to be given to the Muslim side for mosque construction.
It was not clear if the Sunni board would accept the offer. They had demanded land within the municipal limits of Ayodhya. The saffron outfits, however, had made it clear that they would not allow mosque within the cultural limits of the temple town.
The Sunni board spokesman said that the decision on this issue would be taken at the board meeting.
On Wednesday Modi said a trust had been finalized to oversee the Ram temple construction project.
The razing of a mosque at Ayodhya by a huge crowd of Hindu zealots almost 30 years ago unleashed some of the country's worst sectarian violence since independence, with more than 2,000 people killed.
After a decades-long legal battle, India's highest court ruled in November that the land in northern India should be managed by a trust to oversee the construction of a temple.
The temple construction had been a campaign pledge of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even before the mosque's demolition in 1992.
In 2002, when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state, 59 Hindu activists died in a blaze on a train from Ayodhya, leading to riots that saw upwards of 1,000 people perish, mostly Muslims.
For critics, the temple construction forms part of Modi's alleged master plan to remould the country as a Hindu nation, something he denies.