Religious leaders pledge to maintain peace and harmony at inter-faith meet

New Delhi: A day after the Supreme Court verdict in the highly-sensitive Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval held a meeting with eminent Hindu and Muslim religious leaders here, even as the security of five judges, who delivered the verdict, has been enhanced with the deployment of additional troops, barricades and mobile escort teams, officials said on Sunday.

The religious leaders pledged unstinted support to the government in all steps to maintain peace and order, they said. They appealed for maintaining peace and tranquillity amidst apprehensions that some anti-national elements may try to "exploit the situation".

"Those attending the meeting were alive to the fact that certain anti-national and hostile elements, both within and outside the country, may attempt to exploit the situation to harm our national interest," according to a joint statement issued after the four-hour meeting at Doval's residence here.

Meanwhile, enhanced security has been put in place since Saturday when the judges - Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, CJI-designate Sharad Arvind Bobde and justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer - delivered the verdict in the century-old dispute.

"Security of the honourable judges has been enhanced as a precautionary measure. However, there has been no specific threat to any one of the judges," a senior official said.

As part of the security drill, additional troops have been deployed at the residences of the judges with some barricades on the roads leading to their houses. Earlier, the judges had house guards and static security. Now the mobile component of the security has been added, and an escort vehicle with armed guards will accompany each judge's car. "The arrangements are purely a precautionary step," another official said.

Settling a fractious issue that goes back to more than a century, the Supreme Court in a historic verdict on Saturday backed the construction of a Ram temple by a government trust at the disputed site in Ayodhya. It ruled that an alternative five-acre plot must be found for a mosque in the Hindu holy town.