Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had assured the shahi imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid that the Mughal-era mosque would not be declared a protected monument, a letter submitted by the Archaeological Survey of India to the Delhi High Court has revealed. This adds a new dimension to the case in which the high court has been trying to find out for more than a decade why the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government refused to declare the 17th century Jama Masjid a protected monument. Doing so would have meant that control over it would pass to the central government.