Ayodhya: Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA) on Friday demolished walls and pillars illegally built by private developers to demarcate plots boundaries over an area of 16 lakh sq ft around the proposed Dhannipur mosque site.Soon after the announcement of the mosque to be built in Ayodhya following the Supreme Court’s Babri verdict, local realtors had acquired lands around the proposed site, and later started selling plots at escalated prices. Officials said the plotting was done without mandatory ADA permission and fulfilling other necessary criteria.ADA official Mahendra Kumar Singh said around 29 such places had been identified in the area, where property dealers were violating rules by plotting lands and selling them arbitrarily.The Supreme Court, in its verdict delivered on Nov 9, 2019, mandated the allocation of five acres of land to UP Sunni Central Waqf Board for the construction of a mosque and development of other facilities.On Aug 3, 2020, then district magistrate of Ayodhya, Anuj Kumar Jha, transferred the possession of five acres of land to the waqf board in Dhannipur village. The mosque trust applied for the approval of the plan of the masjid on June 23, 2021. In 2025, an RTI reply revealed that ADA had rejected the layout plan of proposed mosque in the absence of the mandatory NOCs from different departments concerned.
