The Supreme Court on Thursday listed for hearing a fresh PIL filed by All India Majlis Itehad Ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi opposing any move to quash the Places of Worship Act, 1991, which bars alteration to any religious structure post August 15, 1947.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar tagged the matter along with a batch of petitions/cross-petitions on the issue. The matter will be taken up for hearing on February 17.

“We will tag it,” the CJI told advocate Nizam Pasha, who appeared for Owaisi.

The Act prohibits the conversion of any places of worship, except the Ram Janmabhoomi site at Ayodhya. The Act was framed by the then P.V. Narasimha Rao government in the wake of the intensified Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute.

Section 3 of the Act debars the conversion of a place of worship of any religious denomination, or a section of it, into a place of worship of a different religious denomination or of a different segment of the same religious denomination. Section 4 mandates the preservation of the religious character of a place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947.

On December 12, the CJI-led bench had in an interim order directed that no courts in the country shall pass any interim or final orders on suits arising out of disputes pertaining to places of worship till the next date of hearing of the batch of petitions/cross-petitions relating to the constitutional validity of the Act.

The direction includes a bar on registration of fresh suits against such disputed places of worship. “We deem it appropriate that fresh suits may be filed, but no suits would be registered and proceedings undertaken till further orders. In pending suits, courts shall not pass any effective interim/final orders or order survey,” a bench of CJI Khanna, Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice K.V. Viswanathan had said.

The court had also directed the Union government to file within four weeks a counter-affidavit to the batch of petitions.