It’s been four years since an alternative 5-acre plot was assigned as the site of a new mosque in Ayodhya, after the Supreme Court handed over the Ram Janmabhoomi land - believed to be the birthplace of Hindu deity Ram, where the 16th-century Babri masjid stood until it was razed in 1992 - to the Hindu.

But while the Ram temple has since come up at the janmabhoomi - and the deity consecrated last week in a big-ticket ceremony - the mosque site in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village still stands vacant, used as a playground by local children or as pasture by farmers.

Work has yet to begin on the project on account of a multitude of problems.

There are allegations that the project size has been scaled down since the first proposal was released in 2020, as well as differences over its design - should the structure just be a mosque, or something grander, a premises with its own massive aquarium?

Then there is the lack of acceptance for an alternative mosque among some Muslims, including national leaders like Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, which has impeded the drive to collect funds for the mosque.

Add to it some administrative hurdles and community leaders' trust issues with both the UP government and the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF), set up by the state Sunni central waqf board to oversee the mosque's construction, and the chaos intensifies.

Local residents in Dhannipur, where the state allocated the land parcel to the Sunni Central Waqf Board in February 2020, allege the mosque project has been "cut down" by the IICF.

Athar Husain, IICF secretary, told ThePrint: "The project design which was submitted to the Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA) earlier did not find acceptance within the community and the project is now being redesigned by the masjid development committee. More time will be taken in formalising it."

Several Muslim community leaders in Ayodhya said there was little acceptability for the mosque among the community and they did not trust the IICF.