NEW DELHI, India - In a move feared to increase religious tension, Muslim leaders on Thursday rejected a plan aimed at preventing Hindu hard-liners from building a temple on a site considered holy by both religions.
The compromise was hastily crafted Tuesday ahead of the militant World Hindu Council's plan to bring pillars for the proposed temple to the disputed site in the northern town of Ayodhya on March 15. The site is where a 16th century mosque once stood before it was destroyed by Hindu militants in 1992.
Some fear that the council's actions would spark another round of religious riots like the violence in the western state of Gujarat last week where the death toll has reached 667.
Under the plan, the Hindus were to be allowed to bring the pillars to an adjacent government-owned plot.
But the All India Muslim Personal Law Board said Thursday it does not want the World Hindu Council - known by its Hindi acronym as VHP - to bring the pillars to the adjacent site, either.
"The government should stop VHP from going ahead with its plan," the board's convener, S.Q.R. Illyas, told the Press Trust of India news agency.
Illyas said the Muslim board would petition the Supreme Court if the government does not stop the Hindu council, the report said. The court earlier said that the land the government acquired around the holy site should not be given to either side until the case is settled.
Also Thursday, opposition lawmakers demanded the interior minister resign for failing to control the Hindu-Muslim riots. The lawmakers screamed anti-government slogans, forcing leaders to adjourn parliament until Friday.
Legislators blamed Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani for failing to prevent the riots in which most of the victims were Muslims burned to death by Hindu mobs. The violence was triggered last week by the massacre of Hindus by a Muslim mob who set fire to their train outside Godhra town in Gujarat. The train had been coming from Ayodhya.
The government has been criticized for giving $4,100 compensation for the train massacre victims and only $2,000 for those killed in the retaliatory riots. Hindus make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion people, while Muslims are 12 percent.
Marxist Communist Party members Nilotpal Basu and Sarala Maheshwari said the killings in Gujarat appeared to be a "state-sponsored genocide of minorities."
In Ahmadabad, the biggest and worst-hit city of Gujarat, police said two people who were seriously burned in the Godhra train massacre have died, raising the death toll to 60.
Another 607 people were killed in the post-Godhra riots, most of them Muslims, police said. Of them, 157 were stabbed and 99 were shot by police. The rest were burned to death.
Police said 820 people are in hospitals with serious injuries, many of them in critical condition.
"The death toll is going higher as more bodies are found" in the charred homes and shops, said Ashok Narain, a senior state government official.
Ten bodies were recovered from a village well at Ajanwaga in Godhra district on Wednesday. The victims had taken shelter in a primary school when they were captured by a mob and thrown into the well.