New mosque construction in India's Ayodhya to begin in May, Muslim group says

FILE PHOTO: A view of a site that was allotted by authorities for a new mosque, about 15 miles from the Hindu Ram Temple, in Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, November 23, 2023. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis/File Photo

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - As Hindu devotees prepare to inaugurate a grand temple to one of their holiest deities, India's minority Muslims plan to begin building a new mosque in the same city later this year, hoping to make a fresh start after a bloody, decades-long dispute.

Haji Arfat Shaikh, the head of the development committee of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF) that is overseeing the mosque project, said this week that construction would begin in May, after the holy month of Ramadan, and the mosque would take three to four years to build.