AYODHYA: Members of the Buddhist community have filed a petition before the Supreme Court claiming that the disputed land at Ayodhya is actually a Buddhist site. The petition says the claim is based on the four excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India at the disputed site, with the last one being held in 2002-2003 on the orders of Allahabad high court’s Lucknow bench.

The petition, registered by the SC on March 6 has been filed by a Buddhist, Vineet Kumar Maurya , who is a resident of Ayodhya. It has been filed as a civil suit under article 32 (read with articles 25, 26 and 29) of the Constitution on behalf of members of the Buddhist society “who are practising and living their lives according to the principles of Lord Buddha and have an inner urge to see that all the issues having significance to the Buddhist religion may be adjudicated in a fair, impartial manner”.

The petition claims that there was a structure relating to the Buddhist religion at the site before Babri mosque was constructed there. “The ASI excavation revealed the existence of stupas, circular stupas, walls and pillars which are distinctive features of a Buddha Vihar,” said Maurya in the petition. “No ruins of any temple or any Hindu structure surfaced in the 50 trenches that had been excavated,” claimed Maurya. He added that the petition has appealed to the SC to declare “the disputed site as a Buddha Vihar like Shravasti, Kapilvastu, Kushinagar, Sarnath”.

