UP Assembly Elections: Development on people’s mind ahead of polling day in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village

In accordance with the apex court order, five acres have been allotted for the mosque, whose site is about 20 km away from the spot where a massive temple of Lord Ram is coming up in Ayodhya.

Ejaz, a resident of the area, says people of different faiths live peacefully at Dhannipur village.

“People only want development and nothing else,” he says.

Another local resident, Afroz Alam, says “mandir-masjid” is no point of discussion among people here.

We are more concerned about betterment of civic facilities, he says.

Candidates for the Assembly polls here also express same views.

Congress candidate Akhilesh Yadav says, “I have visited Dhannipur village during campaigning. People of the village want development. They wish the redress of their day-to-day problems and will be voting for a change.”

The mosque site is a non-issue among them, he tells PTI.

“I don’t think this (mosque site) will hardly have any impact on the elections,” he adds.

His BJP rival Amit Singh Chauhan too says that people with whom he interacted at the village wanted development.

“People crave for all-round development of the village,” he says.

“The proposed mosque is not at all an issue in this election. We are contesting the polls on development plank,” the BJP candidate says.

Samajwadi Party candidate Firoz Khan, who lives barely a km away from the mosque site, too expresses same views.

“The proposed mosque is not a topic in the polls,” he says, adding that development is the main issue.

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi, who had launched his party’s campaign for Uttar Pradesh election in September last year from Rasulabad village, not far from the mosque site, has not fielded any candidate in Bikapur.

On November 9, 2019, the Supreme Court had paved the way for the construction of a Ram temple at the site in Ayodhya where once Babri mosque stood and directed the Centre to allot an alternative five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a new mosque.

The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board has formed the IICF, a trust, for the construction of the mosque on the five-acre plot given for it.

Earlier, the chief architect of the proposed mosque, SM Akhtar, had said that the blueprint of the mosque complex will include a multi-speciality hospital, community kitchen and a library.

The mosque will have a capacity to accommodate 2,000 namazis at a time and the structure will be round-shaped, Akhtar added.

The new mosque will be bigger than the Babri Masjid but won’t be a lookalike of the structure.

The hospital will take centre stage in the complex. It will serve humanity in the true spirit of Islam as taught by the Prophet in his last sermon 1,400 years ago, Akhtar had earlier said.

The neighbouring Muslim-dominated village of Raunahi (earlier known as Ratnapuri) houses two Jain temples, which are also visited by devotees throughout the year.