Meerut, June 26 -- A political controversy has erupted in Sambhal district after the demolition of a mosque that the administration says was illegally constructed on government land, with the Congress leaders terming the action unconstitutional and unlawful. Leading a Congress delegation to the district on Thursday, former Amroha MP Kunwar Danish Ali strongly condemned the demolition of the mosque, alleging that the structure was recorded in official government records and should not have been razed by local authorities. Addressing reporters, Danish Ali said neither the tehsildar nor the district administration had the legal authority to demolish a disputed Waqf property. He argued that any dispute involving Waqf land should be adjudicated by the Waqf Tribunal or the High Court rather than through administrative action. "If the property was under dispute, the matter should have been decided through legal and judicial channels. The question is whether this is the rule of law or a banana republic," he said. According to party leaders, the delegation will collect information from all stakeholders connected to the case and submit a report to the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, which will decide the party's future course of action. Meanwhile, even as the Congress delegation prepared to reach Sambhal, the administration resumed demolition and debris-clearance operations on Wednesday night. Officials deployed two JCB machines to remove rubble and demolish the remaining portions of the structure. A joint police-administration team reached Kaserua village in the Nakhasa police station area at around 8.30 pm and carried out the operation under torchlight and machine-mounted illumination. Officials maintain that the structure, identified as Masjid Mustafa Qadri, had been illegally constructed on approximately 120 square metres of land recorded as a graveyard. According to the administration, the land had been encroached upon and the mosque erected without legal authorisation. The demolition process began earlier this month. A portion of the structure was demolished on June 6 using bulldozers. On June 7, authorities deployed a Pokland excavator and two JCB machines to continue the operation, while the remaining sections were razed on June 8....