Mumbai: Barely three months before the polls and sitting on the project for four long years, Maharashtra Chief Minister Thursday laid the foundation stone of Aurangabad Haj House. Simultaneously he also did the 'bhoomi pujan' of 'Vande Matram House'.
Both the project will be constructed at 1.75 acre land at the cost of Rs 53 crore with the help of City Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO).
This is the third Haj house in the state where about 450 haj pilgrims from across the region can stay and would proceed for Haj. Other two are in Mumbai and Nagpur.
In Vandematarm Sabhagruh where an auditorium hall will be constructed, history of Vande Mataram will be on display.
The construction of Vande Matram House was decided after the project to build the Haj House faced strong opposition from the saffron alliance led by the Shiv-Sena.
A narration of how the entire case of the Aurangabad Haj house - even after the state government’s approval and availability of the needed fund, has been converted into a controversy is a fit case to expose the nexus between the Cong-NCP ruling alliance and the Sena-BJP opposition parties.
According to the sources, while approving the Haj House, it was decided that the proposed project would be completed by CIDCO whereas the land that was identified for the purpose was the property of the Waqf Board. Aurangabad has hundreds of acres of lands that belong to Waqf and there is no dispute anywhere on the titles of these lands.
However, as soon as the state government’s decision to construct the Haj house at the proposed site owned by the Waqf board appeared in the media, there started a strong protest by the Sena-BJP combine and organisations like Bajrang Dal and VHP.
They not only opposed the construction of the Haj house at the proposed site but also claimed the ownership of the Waqf land demanding construction of Vande-Mataram hall on the land instead of the Haj house, the sources said.
The state government, instead of firmly dealing with the right wing Hindu parties and activists, bowed to their illegitimate pressure and threw the project into backburner. Shocked Muslim community leaders approached the chief minister, guardian minister and other leaders of the ruling alliance in a bid to convince and pursue them but to no avail.
Finally, Muslim leaders of Aurangabad met Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan when he was in Nagpur for the February 2013 assembly session and requested him to resolve the issue.
One of the key persons who was with this delegation disclosed to ummid.com that in a bid to resolve the issue it was decided during the meeting that Haj house and Vande Mataram hall both should be constructed on the land with 60% of the land used for the construction of the Haj house and the remaining 40% for the Vande Mataram hall.
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