Explanation:

In its recent Ayodhya judgment, the Supreme Court commended the enactment of Places Of Worship Act, 1991 as one that preserved the constitutional value of secularism by not permitting the status of a place of worship to be changed. Objective of the Act are to freeze the status of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of such a place of worship as on that day, to pre-empt new claims by any group about the past status of any place of worship and attempts to reclaim the structures or the land on which they stood.

The Act declares that the religious character of a place of worship shall continue to be the same as it was on August 15, 1947. It says no person shall convert any place of worship of any religious denomination into one of a different denomination or section. These provisions will not apply to monuments and sites covered by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.