Supreme Court rejects plea for ban on naming mosques after Babur

The Supreme Court on Friday (February 20, 2026) dismissed a petition seeking a ban on naming mosques after the first Mughal emperor Babur.

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta rejected a plea by Devki Nandan Pandey, a petitioner-in-person from Uttar Pradesh, who sought a blanket judicial restraint on naming mosques after Babur or using the nomenclature ‘Babri Masjid’.

Mr. Pandey had made the Union government and States respondents in the petition. He termed Babur an “invader”.

Recently, suspended TMC MLA Humayun Kabir, while laying the foundation of a mosque in Murshidabad in West Bengal, had said that naming a mosque after the Mughal emperor was not unconstitutional.

The Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, was demolished by kar sevaks on December 6, 1992. It had been a site for communal tensions for decades and prolonged legal battles, including a title dispute with the Hindus over the ownership of the land on which the mosque had stood.

In 2019, a five-judge Bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had declared the land to belong to the Hindus.

The Ramjanmabhoomi title dispute verdict of November 2019 had further directed the Centre to allot five acres to the Sunni Waqf Board for the construction of a new mosque at a prominent place.