Hindu Temple Under Varanasi’s Gyanvapi Mosque? Court Orders Survey

Varanasi:

A court docket in Varanasi has ordered the Archaeological Survey of India to hold out a bodily survey of the city’s Gyanvapi Mosque, positioned subsequent to the well-known Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Reacting to the order, the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board stated it can problem the subordinate court docket’s order within the Allahabad Excessive Court docket.

The court docket ordered the survey whereas ruling on a three-decade previous petition, which contended that Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb had demolished an historical temple of “Lord Vishweshwar” and “constructed a mosque with the assistance of the ruins of the stated temple”.

In its order, the court docket requested the Director Common of the ASI to “represent a five-member committee of eminent individuals who’re specialists and well-versed within the science of archaeology, two out of which ought to ideally belong to the minority neighborhood”.

The court docket additionally requested the ASI Chief to nominate an eminent particular person — a scholar or a longtime academician — as an observer for the committee.

In its order, the court docket stated, “The prime function of the Archaeological Survey shall be to search out out whether or not the non secular construction standing at current on the ‘disputed web site’ is a superimposition, alteration or addition or there’s a structural overlapping of any sort, with or over, some other non secular construction”.

The committee, the court docket added, “shall additionally hint whether or not any temple belonging to the Hindu neighborhood ever existed earlier than the mosque in query was constructed or superimposed or added upon it on the ‘disputed’ web site'”.

Hours after the ruling, UP Sunni Central Waqf Board in a press release stated it can method the Allahabad Excessive Court docket. “Our understanding is evident that this case is barred by the Locations of Worship (Particular Provisions) Act, 1991. The Locations of Worship Act was upheld by a five-judge Structure Bench of the Supreme Court docket within the Ayodhya judgment,” Sunni Central Waqf Board chairman Zufar Ahmad Farooqui stated.

“The standing of Gyanvapi Masjid is, as such, past query,” he asserted.

“Even in any other case, we will say as per authorized recommendation that the order of survey is questionable as a result of technical proof can solely complement sure foundational info. No proof has been produced earlier than the court docket that implies that there was a previous current temple on the web site of the mosque,” he added.

The unique petition within the case was filed in 1991 however a clutch of Varanasi residents contended the mosque was constructed over an historical temple in 1664 by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

R Shamshad, a member of the All-India Muslim Private Legislation Board, stated the lawsuit is non-maintainable and must be dismissed in view of a legislation made in 1991.

“A petition was filed looking for dismissal of this go well with on which the district court docket has handed an order. Now the entire subject is pending within the Allahabad Excessive Court docket on whether or not the go well with might be heard or not. On this background, when the difficulty is pending within the Allahabad excessive court docket, I don’t suppose there may be any justification in such an order. Such an order mustn’t have been handed at this stage,” he added.