According to the appeal, Hindu groups have been making calculated attempts year after year to alter the dargah's religious nature by obtaining temporary court orders for Shivarathri pujas.
The management of the Aland Ladle Mashaik Dargah filed a plea with the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking for orders to limit the performance of Hindu Maha Shivaratri puja and other Hindu rites on the dargah's grounds. The court denied the motion.
The petition was filed by the dargah's management in accordance with Article 32 of the Indian Constitution, which permits parties whose basic rights have been infringed to seek remedy directly from the Supreme Court.
It sparked worries that Hindu parties have been making calculated attempts year after year to alter the dargah's religious nature by obtaining temporary court permissions for Shivarathri pujas.
In order to prevent such actions from changing the site's religious character, it pleaded with the top court to step in.
However, a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and SC Sharma stated today that the case did not warrant an Article 32 petition. In the end, the plea was dropped.
Notably, this Bench questioned why an Article 32 petition was filed rather than first going to the High Court when the subject was brought up before Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi yesterday.Why does Article 32 contain all of this information? According to CJI Kant, "the message is that the High Court is defunct, and the impression created is that pleas are coming because the law is convenient."
Both the relics of the 15th-century Hindu saint Raghava Chaitanya and the 14th-century Sufi saint Hazrat Shaikh Alauddin Ansari, also called Ladle Mashaik, are buried at the shrine at the center of the controversy. According to The Hindu, there is also a building on the property known as the Raghava Chaitanya Shivling.
The location was used for worship by both Muslims and Hindus. However, in 2022, disputes over the ability to worship erupted among communities.
The Karnataka High Court allowed 15 Hindus to do Shivaratri puja at the Raghava Chaitanya Shivling in February 2025. The same was carried out with strict security measures in place.
Based on a court decision permitting 15 Hindus to enter the dargah premises and perform the rites, it is also reported that Hindu pujas were held to commemorate Shivaratri a year prior without any unfortunate happenings.
Concerns about a concerted scheme to alter the nature of a place of worship by obtaining temporary court orders were aroused by the appeal that the dargah's leadership submitted to the highest court.The pattern is clearly discernible and extremely concerning, it is respectfully submitted. Interim orders are obtained from the High Court in order to manufacture what cannot be shown by evidence and adjudication. The appeal claimed that police-facilitated entry during festivals is being used to accomplish what the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 forbids.
According to the petition, an application for permission to build a Samadhi or temple within the dargah compound was denied by the Town Municipal Council of Aland in 1968 following a spot inspection. With no documented foundation for any non-Wakf construction, it was noted that the location was the Mazaar (shrine or tomb) of Hazrath Mardan-e-Gaib, encircled by Muslim tombs.
The plea further stated that despite this established stance, numerous attempts to restore the shrine's religious significance through civil action have all failed.
The Shree Siddalingaswamy Karuneswar Temple in Andola announced a "Aland Chalo" padayatra to "cleanse a Shivalinga" at the Mazaar on Mahashivaratri on February 1, 2022, after an attempt at communal mobilization failed due to the failure of the litigation, according to the plea.
"It was sought to be nullified through festival-specific applications and suits seeking permission to perform Pooja on Mahashivaratri after the Karnataka Wakf Tribunal restrained the same," the plea stated.Every proceeding has a certain time frame, calls for a distinct forum, and aims to establish a foundation upon which the subsequent proceeding can be built," the plea continued.
The dargah also claimed that the most recent attempt at this was the writ petition that Sidramayya Hiremath filed in the Karnataka High Court in 2026, asking for a directive to the State and police authorities to allow him and other devotees to perform pooja on the Dargah grounds on February 15 (Mahashivaratri), with police protection.
The same individual submitted a similar case in 2025, and the High Court granted permission for 15 people to enter and perform puja on Mahashivaratri.The now-withdrawn plea stated, "These petitions are being filed year after year around Shivaratri only to establish a foothold of religious entry, turn temporary access into an asserted practice, and then reopen the character of the site through repeated litigation."
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