The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Thursday dismissed a plea seeking to open 22 closed rooms in the Taj Mahal. Rejecting the petition, a bench of Justices DK Upadhyay and Subhash Vidyarthi, stated, “Tomorrow you will come and ask us to go to chambers of honourable judges? Please, don’t make a mockery of the PIL system.”
The plea was filed by Rajneesh Singh, a BJP youth media in-charge, before the Lucknow bench that sought the directions to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to probe the 22 closed doors in the Taj Mahal to ascertain the presence of the idols of Hindu deities.
The plea sought the constitution of a fact-finding committee and the submission of a report by the ASI. The plea also cited the claims by some historians and some Hindu groups about the monument being an old Shiv Temple.
During the hearing, the bench told the petitioner that such debates were welcome in informal settings, but not in a court of law, reported sources
The petitioner had earlier said he had been trying to ascertain the facts since 2020 through the Right to Information Act. “Replying to the RTI, the Union ministry of culture informed the Central Information Commission (in Delhi) that these rooms were locked due to security reasons,” said Singh. And no detail was provided about these rooms, he added.
“In the RTI, I had sought details about locked rooms (what is inside them) and directives to open them,” he said.
“It is an old controversy. There is no harm in authorising ASI to examine these rooms to ascertain facts. This will put to rest all controversies related to the Taj Mahal,” said DP Tewari, former professor of ancient history at the Lucknow University.