Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Minister Sanjay Nishad said on Wednesday that mosques should be moved voluntarily from places where temples exist near them. Talking to mediators in Baghpat, Nishad said, Wherever there is a temple and a mosque nearby, I want the mosques to move voluntarily just like what happened with the Ram Temple, where the temple is built without any problems and the mosque is built in another place. We don’t want them to move; other religions of Indian culture they can build their places of worship wherever they want.
Nishad, who holds the fisheries department portfolio, is the president of the NISHAD party, which contested the 2022 assembly elections in alliance with the ruling BJP. The party won six mandates. Welcoming the government’s decision to conduct a survey of madrassas in the state, Nishad said “terrorists and criminals have been found to have links with madrassas”. The minister also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath for “making the state riot-free”. Earlier this month, the UP government announced that it would conduct a survey of unrecognized madrassas in the state to gather information on the number of teachers, curriculum and basic facilities available there, among other things.
