Express News Service
LUCKNOW: A Varanasi district court, hearing the Gyanvapi Mosque-Kashi Vishwanath Temple dispute, has decided to deliver the order on Tuesday to decide the maintainability of the petition seeking daily worship of Shringar Gauri present on the premises of the mosque.
The court would also decide whether to take the advocate commissioner’s survey report of the mosque into account and invite objections to it or not.
The cases related to the Gyanvapi mosque were transferred from Varanasi Civil Judge (Senior Division) to the district court of Judge Dr Ajaya Krishna Vishvesha on Monday in compliance with the Supreme Court’s Friday order.
District and Sessions Judge Dr AK Vishvesha is expected to deliver an order as the arguments over the maintainability of the suit were concluded on Monday after the Hindu parties submitted their objections to the survey report by the advocate commissioner, who had videographed and conducted a survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque.
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The Muslim parties represented by Anjuman Intezamia Masajid (AIM) had challenged the maintainability of the suit seeking daily worship of Shringar Gauri saying the Places of Worship Act of 1991 did not allow any petition in this connection as the Act protected the status of all religious structures as they stood on August 15, 1947.
On Tuesday, the district court will decide which petition to hear and when in order of procedure.
In all, five petitions — including the AIM’s plea challenging the maintainability of the petition seeking daily worship of Shringar Gauri situated on mosque premises under Places of Worship Act 1991, a plea of a bunch of five women seeking daily worship of Shringar Gauri on Gaynvapi mosque premises, worship of ‘Shivlinga’ allegedly found in mosque’s wuzu khana during survey petition by state government counsel to make alternative arrangement for wuzu as the wuzu khana stands sealed by the Supreme Court order, a petition seeking a further survey of western walls of the mosque, the debris lying on the basementbehind the sealed Wuzu Khana and the opening of the basement — are pending.
Earlier, the Varanasi civil court had ordered a survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque by a court-appointed advocate commissioner in response to a petition — Rakhi Singh vs the State of UP – seeking daily worship of Shringar Gauri. The advocate commissioner had conducted the survey, videographed it and submitted a report to the civil court on May 19.
However, the Hindu side contended in District and Sessions court that without taking the survey report into account, the maintainability of the petition seeking Shringar Gauri worship could not be decided as the nature of the religious structure is the subject matter of the dispute.
The plaintiffs before the Court are ten individuals acting as next friends of the deities claimed to be existing within the precincts of the mosque.
They have claimed that a Jyotirlingam in the ancient temple was desecrated in 1669 under the orders of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb, but Maa Shringar Gauri, Lord Ganesh and other deities continued to exist.
After the partial demolition of the ancient temple of Lord Adi Visheshwar, the Gyanvapi Mosque was raised, the plaint filed through advocates Hari Shankar Jain and Pankaj Kumar Verma said.
