Gyanvapi mosque survey: The ASI has to submit the report back to the district court docket by August 4.
New Delhi:
A survey of Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque by the Archaeological Survey of India will start Monday morning, the district Justice of the Peace has stated. The survey – ordered by a neighborhood court docket on Friday – will start early within the morning. It’s going to lengthen to all areas besides the sealed “wuzukhana” the place a construction that Hindu litigants claimed to be a ‘Shivling’ – a relic of Lord Shiva — was found throughout a survey in 2022. The ASI has to submit the report back to the district court docket by August 4.
The court docket’s order got here in response to a petition by a bunch of girls who declare the mosque was constructed over a Hindu temple. The ladies declare that historical idols of Hindu gods and goddesses are positioned contained in the mosque and solely a scientific survey can reveal the reality.
In Might, the Supreme Courtroom had deferred the “scientific survey”, together with carbon relationship, of a “Shivling” that was stated to have been discovered on the Gyanvapi mosque advanced throughout a videographic survey carried out final 12 months. The court docket had additionally ordered that the ‘wazukhana’ space be sealed.
Earlier, the Allahabad Excessive Courtroom directed the ASI to conduct a scientific survey of the construction that Hindu petitioners claimed is a “Shivling”. The Gyanvapi mosque authorities had stated the construction is part of a fountain within the “wazukhana”, the place individuals carry out ablutions earlier than providing namaz.
In September final 12 months, the Varanasi district decide had dismissed a problem by the mosque committee that argued that the case by the ladies has no authorized standing.
Situated in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, the Gyanvapi mosque is among the a number of mosques the appropriate wing believes have been constructed on the ruins of Hindu temples.
It was one of many three temple-mosque rows, moreover Ayodhya and Mathura, which the BJP raised within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties.