Indian rights activists have expressed dismay over the court’s decision.

The Calcutta High Court on Aug. 18 dismissed the public interest litigation filed by Advocate Md Danish Farooqui, observing that the allegation was vague and not supported by specific material evidence.

Farooqui's petition said police officers were meeting mosque representatives and directing them to remove all loudspeakers instead of implementing the Supreme Court guidelines prescribing decibel limits to be followed while using them in public places.

The High Court's division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Atarup Banerjee held that there was no written police or government order to remove the loudspeakers that could be challenged.

The petition was based on newspaper reports on the alleged removal of loudspeakers, it said.

The petitioner also provided no evidence that loudspeakers were removed from 4,000 mosques under threat of coercive actions.

Suspicion, howsoever high, cannot be a substitute for actual proof, the court observed.

Rights activists said West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had ordered the removal of 5,299 loudspeakers from places of worship across 34 police districts to enforce noise pollution regulations.

Of these, 4,203 loudspeakers were removed from mosques and 1,096 from temples, they claimed.

Adhikari told reporters that the law was being applied equally to all religious institutions and that no community was being singled out. The state administration was enforcing rules uniformly at both mosques and temples.

Salim Engineer, a scholar and national vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, a Muslim socio-religious group, said no one is against the reduction of noise pollution, but it is evident that the government is behaving in a highly biased manner.

This action [removal of loudspeakers] is 400 percent in the case of mosques though the Muslim population in the state is about 27 percent, he noted.

Engineer told UCA News on Aug. 19 that he had hoped the court would instruct the government not to act in a communally biased manner.

The hate speeches against Muslims during the state elections [earlier this year] can't be ignored while analyzing this order of the government, he added.

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John Dayal, a senior journalist and spokesperson for the All India Catholic Union, said the judges left West Bengal's Muslim community without the hearing its grievance warranted.

Demanding documentary proof of an oral order is asking the impossible, as verbal police instructions by nature leave no paper trail, he added.

Dayal said the state's own account did not help, as the Advocate General first told the court nothing had been done, only for Chief Minister Adhikari to later supply precise figures for the operation.

Removing loudspeakers from four mosques for one temple is not uniformity which the court ought to have reflected upon, he noted.

Herod Mullick, founder-secretary of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba (BCP or Bengal Christian Council), an ecumenical body, said the ringing of temple bells and the use of mosque loudspeakers both serve specific, traditional purposes.

Enforcing a specific decibel limit would have been the desirable approach instead of completely banning or dismantling either practice, he noted.

Akbar Khan, a Muslim filmmaker, said there must be one law, one standard and one enforcement mechanism for all.

Father Dominic Gomes, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Calcutta, said that the ideal way would be to regulate noise as per the law and respect the faith practices.

Calls to West Bengal state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya and BJP chief spokesperson Debjit Sarkar remained unanswered till publishing this report.

Source: ucanews.com