UP Waqf Board defers construction of hospital in Ayodhya for lack of funds
Lucknow (PTI): The paucity of funds has forced the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust to defer the construction of a hospital in Ayodhya's Dhannipur, the location where the Waqf board was granted land after the historic Ram Mandir Supreme Court verdict in 2019.
The Trust is handling a mega project under which a mosque, a charity hospital, and a community kitchen is supposed to be built.
According to its members, the trust had originally planned to build the hospital first, and a mosque later, but was held back by the lack of money it is required to pay in fees and development charges.
Athar Hussain, the secretary and spokesperson of the trust, said the project will now be taken up in several small phases.
"We have put the project on hold for now due to paucity of funds. Despite the difficulty, we will not shelf the project, but will change the strategy. We will divide the project into several small projects," Hussain told PTI.
"We will submit a new map of the mosque to the Ayodhya Development Authority. The mosque will take less money to build. It will be very easy to arrange it," he said.
According to Hussain, the mosque, to be built over 15,000 square feet, will cost Rs 8-10 crore and will be powered with solar panels.
Hussain said the mosque was supposed to come after the hospital, but the trust could not shore up Rs 300 crore needed to build it.
"Our effort was to build the hospital before the mosque, but it is an ambitious project involving Rs 300 crore. The land where the mosque is proposed to be built already has many mosques, so we had thought of building a charity hospital and community kitchen first," he said.
Zufar Farooqui, the chief trustee of the foundation and also the chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board, said the trust members will start seeking donations from the public next month onwards across the country.
He said a meeting of the board will be held at the end of July to prepare a strategy to that end.
On November 9, 2019, the Supreme Court in its verdict in Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case had ordered to give the disputed site for the construction of the temple and granted five acres of land in Ayodhya to the Muslims for the construction of a mosque.
The district administration had given Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board land in Dhannipur village in Sohawal tehsil, some 25 kilometers from the Ram Temple site, in compliance of the verdict.
The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust was formed by the Waqf Board in July 2020 to oversee the construction of the mosque.
The Trust later decided to use the land to build a charity hospital, a community kitchen, a library, and a research institute, in addition to the mosque.
The construction of the mosque in Dhannipur is yet to take off, even as Ram temple is in its final stages and is slated to be open to public by January next year.
The mosque project was earlier hamstrung by a detail in change of land use, which was sorted in March this year.
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Malian defence minister killed in attack that saw jihadis and rebels seize towns, military bases
Dakar (AP): Malian Minister of Defence Gen. Sadio Camara was killed in an attack as jihadi and rebel forces seized towns and military bases across the country, according to a military officer and two other sources on Sunday.
There was no immediate comment from the Malian government.
“Unfortunately, the Ministry of Defence, Gen. Sadio Camara, has been killed during the attack which targeted his house yesterday,” said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to the media.
Two other people, a civil society leader and a security member, confirmed the information.
Separatist fighters on Saturday joined Islamic militants in launching one of the biggest coordinated attacks on the Malian army in the capital and several other cities that left at least 16 wounded.
The separatists have been fighting for years to create an independent state in northern Mali, while al-Qaida and Islamic State group-aligned militants have been fighting the government for over a decade.
Malian troops and Russian mercenaries withdrew from the northern city of Kidal after the attacks, the rebels said Sunday.
A spokesperson for the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a separatist group, said the Russian Africa Corps troops and the Malian military withdrew from the city after an agreement was reached for their peaceful exit.
“Kidal is declared free,” said FLA spokesperson Mohamed El Maouloud Ramadan.
The Malian army did not respond to requests for comment but in an earlier statement said they were “tracking down terrorist armed groups in Kidal.”
The separatists have been fighting for years to create an independent state in northern Mali. Kidal had long served as a stronghold of the rebellion before being taken by Malian government forces and Russian mercenaries in 2023. Its capture marked a significant symbolic victory for the junta and its Russian allies.
It was the first time the separatists worked alongside the al-Qaida-linked militant group JNIM, which also claimed responsibility for Saturday's attacks on Bamako's international airport and four other cities, including Kidal, in central and northern Mali.
“This operation is being carried out in partnership with the JNIM, which is also committed to defending the people against the military regime in Bamako,” Ramadan said.
Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center security think tank, said that the coordination between the two groups, as well as the explicit call for the Russian military to leave, is new.
“The coordination, conducting attacks all over the country at the same time, real coordination on the military level but also on the political level because both claims of both groups they acknowledged that they worked together, this is a first,” said Nasr.
Mali government spokesperson Gen. Issa Ousmane Coulibaly said on state television late Saturday that 16 people were wounded, including civilians and military personnel, and that several militants were killed. He did not provide a death toll.
The governor of Bamako's district, Abdoulaye Coulibaly, announced a three-day overnight curfew, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The Economic Community of West African States has condemned the attacks and called on “all states, security forces, regional mechanisms and populations of West Africa to unite and mobilize in a coordinated effort to combat this scourge.”
The separatists called on Russia to “reconsider its support for the military junta in Bamako, whose actions have contributed to the suffering of the civilian population.”
Following military coups, the juntas in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso turned from Western allies to Russia for help in combating Islamic militants. But the security situation has worsened in recent times, with a record number of attacks by militants. Government forces have also been accused of killing civilians they suspect of collaborating with militants.
In 2024, an al-Qaida-linked group claimed an attack on Bamako's airport and a military training camp in the capital, killing scores of people.
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said that while the attacks were a major blow to the credibility of Mali's Russian partners, JNIM is unlikely to take control of Bamako in the near term due to opposition from the local population.
“The attacks are a major blow to Russia as the mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities. They have unnecessarily worsened the conflict by not distinguishing between civilians and combatants,” Laessing said.
