Gandhinagar: Bajrang Dal president of Gandhinagar district, Shaktisinh Zala has requested the Gujarat High Court to proceed with the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to ban loudspeakers in the mosques. This comes after the Zala came to know that the previous petitioner, Gandhinagar based doctor named Dharmendra Prajapati, decided to withdraw his petition on 31st March. Prajapati has been receiving threats to withdraw the petition. On Monday, Advocate Deepak Shukla requested on behalf of Zala in front of the bench of Chief Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Ashutosh Shastri to implead Zala as an intervener and continue the litigation.

The state government till date has not responded to the notice issued by the bench earlier. As reported in the Hindustan Times, the bench of Chief Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Ashutosh Shastri on Monday while asking the state government to clear it stand on the issue said : “You file your reply and clear your stand. Do not adopt dual standards”.

The government had cited the reason for its inaction as the withdrawal of the petition by Prajapati, who expressed his intention to withdraw the petition during the previous hearings.

Prajapati had stated that although quite few people respond to the prayer call and go to offer namaz in the mosque in his neighbourhood, the muezzin uses the loudspeaker for azaan call at high volume. This causes inconvenience and creates disturbance to the people, including the elderly and sick people who need to rest as well as students preparing for their exams. Prajapati contended that people have the right to peace and tranquillity and filed the petition in 2020 to enforce the ban on the use of loudspeakers in mosques for azaan.

Prajapati had cited the ruling of the Allahabad High Court which rejected the request by a muezzin of Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh to allow the use of amplified devices for azaan calls. The Allahabad high court in a 2020 verdict allowed the five-time prayer calls of azaan from mosques, which cannot be amplified using loudspeakers without prior permission of respective district administrations.

In his petition, Prajapati had alleged that he had approached local authorities in the past to seek enforcement of the sound limit, but the administration did not act on his grievance. Prajapati’s lawyer in a previous hearing had said that the sound level of loudspeakers in mosques violate the permissible sound limit for loudspeakers at 80 decibels often reaching 200 decibels.

The issue of banning loudspeakers in the mosques for azaan in Gujarat comes in the backdrop of the increasing debates over the issue across the country, sparking controversies in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana.