India, July 5 -- The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Saturday strongly condemned the Allahabad High Court's recent judgment in the Syed Rashid Ali v. State of UP case, alleging that the ruling severely undermines secularism, minority rights, and the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.

Terming the court's interpretation of the Places of Worship Act, 1991 "deeply flawed," the CPI(M) stated that allowing the acquisition of mosques for "public purposes" renders vital secular safeguards meaningless. "When a mosque is demolished for a road, its religious character ceases to exist. This is conversion through acquisition, precisely what the Act was meant to prevent," the party stated in a press release issued by its Centr...