A few days after Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations and a little before Jummatul Alvida (last Friday of Ramzan), the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh swung into action. Quoting a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, in Motilal Yadav vs The State of Uttar Pradesh, the government, in an even-handed manner, removed around 10,900 loudspeakers from various places of worship, with the initial focus being on the Chief Minister’s constituency (Gorakhpur), the Prime Minister’s constituency (Varanasi), besides Lucknow and Allahabad.
The early reports revealed that most places of worship, mosques and temples, were flouting the court order and using loudspeakers either without legal permission or above the prescribed decibel level. Within a couple of days, the campaign extended to towns in western Uttar Pradesh — Agra, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, etc. In Agra, 756 loudspeakers were removed from various places of worship. At one go, around 90% of mosques and 85% of temples were found to be at fault.
