The Gouripur Jame Masjid — also known as Bankra Masjid or Bakra Masjid — is a 136-year-old mosque that predates Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport itself. As the airport expanded over the decades, the mosque ended up sitting inside the security zone near the secondary runway, close enough to the flight path that the touchdown point has reportedly been shifted 88 metres south for safety, reducing the runway's usable length to around 2,832 metres — enough only for smaller aircraft like the A320 or Boeing 737.

Entry passes for devotees, previously issued after Aadhaar verification, were suspended over the weekend, with authorities initially citing rain damage to the access road and security concerns flagged by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security. Mosque committee president and former West Bengal minister Maulana Siddiqullah Chowdhury — who is also associated with Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in the state — objected strongly, saying the gates were shut without prior notice and with CISF assistance, and has written to the airport director seeking clarity on when prayers can resume.

Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar addressed the issue directly this week, saying the mosque near the runway will be relocated and accusing previous state governments of avoiding the issue for years due to what he called appeasement politics. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari went further, arguing that national security concerns override other considerations, and suggested Chowdhury's objections had been comparatively restrained only because he was now dealing with a different state government than before.

The dispute isn't new. Airport officials say every past attempt by the Union Civil Aviation Ministry to relocate the mosque was blocked for political reasons under previous state governments, going back through the tenures of Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Mamata Banerjee. At a meeting earlier this year with the North 24 Parganas District Magistrate's office, airport officials presented maps outlining the technical and safety challenges posed by the mosque's location, to which the mosque committee responded that it lacked the authority to make a decision of that scale on its own and asked officials to approach the state's larger Muslim organisations instead.

BJP MLA Sourav Sikdar, whose constituency includes the airport, said the mosque committee currently isn't willing to relocate, but that authorities have offered an alternative arrangement if they agree to shift.

Whether Tuesday's suspension of entry passes turns into a lasting resolution, or becomes another chapter in a dispute that has already outlasted three chief ministers, remains unclear. Both the mosque committee and state and central authorities appear to be waiting on each other for the next move.