A large number of devotees trooped to the dargah of Salar Masud Ghazi in Bahraich on Saturday night despite the district administration suspending the event this year and Allahabad High Court refusing to interfere with the order.
Responding to a petition by Mohammad Wakaullah, the president of the dargah committee, the Lucknow bench of the high court said it had no reason to overturn the local administration's order, which maintained that the mela could pose a law-and-order problem in the aftermath of the India-Pakistan conflict.
Justices Attau Rahman Masoodi and Subhas Vidyarathi, however, said on Saturday evening that the dargah committee must welcome devotees as usual.
A large number of people started assembling at the dargah at night. They were accompanied by several teams of qawwali singers, some of whom performed at the site.
Salar Masud Ghazi, the son of Mahmud of Ghazni's commander Sahu Ghazi, is believed to have got married on May 17. Nightlong cultural events are held to celebrate the occasion.
According to police estimates, there were over 5,000 devotees at the dargah on Sunday. Muslims and Hindus both offer chadars at the shrine.
Police sources said additional forces had been deployed at the dargah and devotees were being requested to return after paying obeisance.
Several Hindutva groups, which link Ghazi with the Ghaznavid invasions in India, had urged the Yogi Adityanath government to stop the mela.
Wakaullah had told the high court that Ghazi was a follower of Sufism and the dargah was built in his memory by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, in 1375.