A three-storey mosque on Dehradun’s Shimla Bypass became the latest flashpoint this week, when Bajrang Dal activists stopped roof-sealing work and demanded the building be investigated and sealed. It lands, though, in a state that has sealed over 200 unregistered madrasas since early 2025, demolished several hundred roadside and forest shrines, shut at least five mosques in the Dehradun area, and on July 1, 2026 abolished its madrasa board.
What happened at Sevla Kalan
Grouting work was under way on the third floor of the mosque in Sevla Kalan when a group led by Bajrang Dal’s Vikas Verma arrived and forced it to stop. Verma argued the structure encroached on the road and obstructed commuters, and objected that it stood in a Hindu-majority locality.
He told reporters his side had first complained about the building in 2017, and that it had since grown to three floors. He wants the whole property investigated and demolished immediately if any part is found illegal.
Officials from the Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA), the police and the municipal corporation came to the site but did not intervene, local reports said. As of this writing, no official statement on the building’s legal status has been reported.
Two accounts of the same building
The dispute turns on whether the work was new construction or maintenance, and whether the building has approvals. Neither side’s documents have been made public.
| Issue | Bajrang Dal (Vikas Verma) | Mosque side (Muslim Seva Sangathan) |
| Nature of the work | Illegal construction that has grown to three floors since a 2017 complaint | Cement grouting on the third-floor roof slab to stop rainwater seeping in; no new construction |
| Legality | Structure is illegal; whole property should be probed | Built according to the rules; all documents available to prove it |
| Road encroachment | Encroaches on the road and blocks commuters | Denied |
| Locality | Objects to a mosque in a Hindu-majority area; alleges residents were pressed to leave | Not addressed in reports |
| Demand / position | Seal it; demolish immediately if any part is illegal | Allegations rejected outright |
The mosque side was represented by Naeem Qureshi, president of the Muslim Seva Sangathan, and vice-president Aqib Qureshi. Open question: has MDDA ever issued a notice for this building, and does it hold a sanctioned map?
Thano: how a partial notice became a full sealing
The Jama Masjid in Thano, which locals say has functioned since 1978, went from a single disputed room to a fully sealed building in about six months. Its path is the closest precedent for Sevla Kalan.
| Date | Event |
| Jun 2026 (days after) | Kali Sena members perform a havan outside the sealed mosque; Muslim Seva Sangathan marches to the DM’s office on Jun 5 and says it will approach the High Court |
| Jun 1, 2026 | MDDA seals the entire premises; some reports, including the item that prompted this article, give Jun 2 |
| Late May 2026 | Kali Sena’s Bhupesh Joshi sets a Jun 1 deadline to vacate, saying no mosque should stand in front of the Balakundri temple |
| May 12, 2026 | MDDA issues a notice to the mosque committee |
| Early 2026 | Uttarakhand High Court dismisses a petition by the Jama Masjid Society seeking relief |
| Dec 17, 2025 | MDDA seals the upper floor(s) over a roughly 20 × 40 ft area built without an approved map; ground floor left open because people live there |
The two sides disagree on scope. MDDA says the building violated the Uttarakhand Urban and Rural Planning and Development Act, 1973, and that management was given time to produce documents. The imam, Yasir Arafat, says the only problem was one room built by the state’s Minority Welfare Department, yet the whole mosque was shut.
Local Muslims also told that no building in the village has an MDDA-sanctioned map, since the authority itself dates from the 1980s. The reported that complainants said the mosque was not registered with the Waqf Board or Madrasa Board, and that departmental inquiries backed this.
Five mosques shut in the Dehradun area
Thano was described by IndiaTomorrow as the fifth mosque in the area to be closed. Newsclick names the other four; dates and grounds below are as reported.
| Mosque | Authority | Reported ground | When |
| Jama Masjid, Thano (Kandogal) | MDDA | No approved map for part of the building; non-registration alleged by complainants | Partly Dec 2025; fully Jun 2026 |
| “Van Masjid”, Asharodi forest | Rajaji Tiger Reserve, with police | Structure in forest area; sealed on a Supreme Court directive, matter pending there | Sep 23 (year not stated in report) |
| Dhakrani, Vikasnagar tehsil | Civil administration, MDDA, Madrasa Board team | Part of a drive against unregistered madrasas | Mar 2025 |
| MDDA colony | MDDA | No official permission | Before Jun 2026 |
| Opposite Raipur police station | MDDA | No official permission | Before Jun 2026 |
From Madrasa Board to Minority Education Authority
On July 1, 2026 Uttarakhand became the first state to abolish its statutory madrasa board, placing schools of all six notified minorities under one regulator. Four months in, only a fraction of the state’s madrasas have cleared the new process.
| Before Jul 1, 2026 | From Jul 1, 2026 | |
| Law | Madrasa Education Board Act, 2016; Arabic and Persian Madrasa Recognition Rules, 2019 | Uttarakhand Minority Education Act, 2025; Recognition Rules, 2026 |
| Regulator | Madrasa Board (Muslim institutions only) | State Authority for Minority Education: Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi |
| Route to recognition | Board recognition | Affiliation with the Uttarakhand Board of School Education, then recognition by the Authority, online |
| Curriculum | Board-set madrasa syllabus | State board curriculum and NEP; optional religious syllabus set by the Authority |
| Weekly holiday | Friday | Sunday, for recognised madrasas and applicants |
The October 27–28 Gairsain session passed an amendment adding penalties for breaches of religious-education rules. A draft religious syllabus covering faith, nationalism, Indian history and culture now awaits Education Department approval, per Authority chair Surjeet Singh Gandhi.
Rule of law, or a pattern?
The government’s case is that it is enforcing planning, land and education law evenly. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami says the old madrasa law wrongly limited minority recognition to Muslims, and that the new Authority brings transparency and standards. He frames the shrine drive as recovering public land, and officials note temples and gurdwara structures were also removed. Courts have backed parts of this: the High Court ruled in July 2025 that unregistered madrasas cannot impart religious education
Critics argue enforcement is selective in who it reaches and how. They point to:
- Triggers: in Thano and Sevla Kalan, action followed or was demanded by Hindutva groups, and officials were present but did not intervene at Sevla Kalan.
- Scope: a notice about one room ended with a whole mosque sealed.
- Numbers: 465 shrines against 45 temples by August 2023
- Rhetoric: the Chief Minister’s repeated use of “land jihad”
- Education: Muslim groups see the new Act as a way to curb madrasa religious teaching rather than regulate.
