High alert across India after Supreme Court’s Ayodhya ruling

NEW DELHI - Soon after the Supreme Court Tuesday rejected a plea for deferring the Ayodhya verdict, the central government put all states, especially Uttar Pradesh where the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site is located, on high alert.

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court will deliver the verdict in the 61-year-old title suit on Thursday afternoon.

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia rejected a plea by a retired bureaucrat that the judgment by the Allahabad High Court - initially scheduled for Sep 24 and then deferred by the apex court - be deferred to facilitate efforts for an out of court settlement.

In its latest advisory, the home ministry has asked states to strictly enforce security measures in sensitive locations. Local administrations have been asked to activate peace committees of Hindus and Muslims.

At least 20 cities, towns and religious places have been identified as communally-sensitive. Theyinclude Ayodhya, where the disputed site is located and district headquarters Faizabad and the temple towns of Mathura and Varnasi in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow, where the verdict will be delivered, Kanpur, Moradabad, Aligarh and Meerut are among the other towns of the state where extra vigil is suggested.

Nearly 170,000 security personnel - 160,000 state policemen and 10,000 paramilitary troopers - have been deployed in Uttar Pradesh.

Among other states, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala are considered potentially volatile. Vigil has been urged in several cities including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Hyderabad, Pune, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Kozhikode and Jammu.

A large number of police and security personnel have been deployed in sensitive places across the country for the past 10 days, as the high court judgment was initially expected Sep 24.

As per the contingency plans of the home ministry, central forces have been based in different locations so that they can be flown into any place of trouble.

The suit relates to a disputed site which the Hindu groups claim to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. On Dec 6, 1992, radical Hindu activists destroyed Babri Masjid, a mosque on the site, alleging it was built after razing a temple there.