By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
New Delhi: It was a usual communal harmony program held peacefully every year by some social organizations in Ayodhya on Gandhi Jayanti. But this time the Faizabad district administration did not allow the program to be held and detained for whole day the man behind the program – Jugul Kishore Shastri, a local saint who resides in his math at stone’s throw from makeshift temple built on the debris of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
Ayodhya ki Awaz and Asha Parivar were to organize a Sarva Dharma Sadhbhav Sammelan (all-religion communal harmony convention) like every year on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. This time the program was scheduled to be held on 1st October at Ram-Janki Mandir of which Jugal Kishore Shashtri is also the mahant. But the Faizabad district administration, acting on a false allegation that a CD containing the controversial Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath’s speech was going to be screened at the program, banned the program itself and Jugul Kishore Shashtri was taken by the police to Police Station Pura Kalandar, 30 km from Ayodhya “so that he could not organize the programme in any way,” said the organizers in a statement. The organizers had planned that if the permission for the outdoor program would not be given then a meeting would be held indoors without a loudspeaker, but that too could not happen.
Members from Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu communities had assembled from various places at Shashtri’s temple to take part in the program like every year. Ayodhay ki Awaz, Asha Parivar and National Alliance of People’s Movement have been organizing programs every 30th January, 2nd October and 6th December in Ayodhya to strengthen the forces of communal harmony and peace. Just last month on 24th September Shashtri had organized an Id Milan program in Faizabad.
Ex-DM Amod Kumar has even participated in some of the programs of Ayodhya ki Awaz. “But this time the district administration showed its communal colour and based on a false charge banned the programme and detained Shashtri ji for the entire day. Shashtri was released in the evening.”
Several human and civil rights activists attached to the program including Sandeep Pandey, Faisal Khan, Father Anand, Father Baptist and Bhante Tejankar Deep have strongly condemned “this act of district administration of Faizabad to gag the right to expression and indirectly favour the communal forces.”
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