Zubair Qureshi
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has issued notices to the Chairman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in a case challenging construction of a temple in Islamabad for the Hindu community of the federal capital.
A local lawyer of Islamabad has challenged in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) the federal government’s decision to construct a temple for Hindu community of Islamabad.
In Tuesday’s hearing, the petitioner claimed a temple for Hindus already existed in the model village of Saidpur (a tourist site in Islamabad) and the government instead of constructing a new temple should renovate the existing one.
Prime Minister Imran Khan and officials of the Religious Affairs Ministry, Interior Ministry, Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Chairman of the Union Council H-9 have been cited as respondents in the case.
The petitioner Tanveer Akhtar Advocate argues in his petition that in the Master Plan of Islamabad there was no such provision of a temple on the site where it is going to be built in the Sector H-9 and therefore, “the land allotted for the construction of the temple be withdrawn along with the funds allocated for the project.”
Prime Minister Imran Khan had approved last week a grant of Rs100 million (Dh 2.182 million) for the construction of the first Hindu temple in the capital.
The petitioner also lamented the government didn’t have funds for the construction of a mosque but released funds for a temple and requested the court to issue a restraining order.
After his arguments, Justice Amer Farooq of the IHC remarked that the CDA should clarify whether the temple in H-9 is part of the Master Plan of Islamabad or not. The court issuing notices to the respondents adjourned the hearing until next week.
Pritam Das Rathi, a retired civil servant living in Islamabad while talking to Pakistan Observer said some 3,000 Hindus—working in health department (hospitals), CDA, non-government organizations (NGOs), federal secretariat and other private departments—were living in Islamabad and its periphery but there was no temple or cremation place for them.
The temple in Saidpur village is a national heritage site and tourist place. The temple there is no longer used for prayer but it is only a tourism point, said he.
“Wherever Hindus live, they need a temple to pray, a cremation place to perform rituals of their dead. Unfortunately, in Islamabad we do not have any such place and it was our consistent and persistent demand from successive governments for construction of a temple in the federal capital which is an international city,” said Pritam Das.
The proposed temple has been the result of continuous efforts of the Hindu community which first took up the matter with National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) and drew its attention to the site of a temple in Islamabad’s Master Plan.When asked if there was a site allocated for the Hindu temple in Sector H-9 in the Master Plan of Islamabad, he said of course or else how CDA would have approved it.
Besides, it is not going to be a temple alone. It is going to be a complex consisting of a temple, a cremation place and community centre where we, the Hindus could hold conferences, celebrate festivals of Holi and Diwali etc, Pritam Das Rathi further said.
When his attention was drawn to the opposition by some sections of society, he expressed his wonder saying in all the four provinces and even in the former tribal areas Hindus’ temples existed and the local Hindus went there to offer prayers. It is only Islamabad where no such place existed.
