A mosque that predates the building it stands beside — and possibly the neighbourhood around it — is now at the centre of a sharp constitutional question before the Delhi High Court. AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, called out what he described as a glaring double standard: the Union government has told the court that the Qadeemi Masjid, located inside the Krishi Bhawan compound in New Delhi, must be demolished to make way for the Common Central Secretariat (CCS) — on the ground that it is 'impermissible and incompatible with the secular character of government property.'

A mosque older than the building around it

The Qadeemi Masjid's presence inside Krishi Bhawan — the complex that houses the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare — is not a recent encroachment. Owaisi points out that the mosque stood there before 1912, predating even the construction of Krishi Bhawan itself. The word qadeemi means 'ancient' in Urdu, and the mosque's name is itself a statement of its vintage. The government's submission to the court, as characterised by Owaisi, makes no accommodation for that history.

The Bhoomi Pooja argument at the heart of Owaisi's challenge

Owaisi's sharpest point is not legal — it is logical. The Central Vista redevelopment project, approved by the Union government in 2019 with its foundation stone laid for the new Parliament building in 2020, was inaugurated with a Bhoomi Pooja — a Hindu consecration ritual. That ceremony, conducted on what is unambiguously public land being funded by taxpayers of every faith, drew criticism at the time. Now the same government, in the same project, invokes secularism as the reason a mosque cannot remain. 'Secularism,' Owaisi writes, 'is not offended by the use of one faith's rituals for a public project, but is allergic to a masjid that has stood there even before 1912.' The contrast is deliberate and difficult to dismiss. If the constitutional principle of secularism governs what may stand on government land, critics argue it must govern what may be performed on that land too — and vice versa.

Central Vista's recurring collision with history

The Central Vista project — one of independent India's most ambitious and contested infrastructure programmes — has repeatedly collided with questions about heritage, land use, and due process. The plan to replace colonial-era administrative buildings in Lutyens' Delhi with a modern secretariat cluster has faced legal challenges since its inception, with courts and conservationists scrutinising heritage clearances and demolition orders. The Qadeemi Masjid case adds a communal-rights dimension to those existing fault lines. The Delhi High Court's eventual ruling will carry weight beyond this single mosque — it will effectively define how the state balances religious structures of historical standing against large-scale infrastructure mandates on government land. A century-old prayer space, a government affidavit invoking secularism, and a Bhoomi Pooja on the same stretch of Delhi soil: the High Court will now have to decide what the Constitution actually means when it says the state has no religion.