NEW DELHI, May 24: The court of Varanasi’s senior-most judge, which on the orders of the Supreme Court will start hearing the Gyanvapi Mosque dispute case from Thursday, has decided the priority of the petitions filed in connection with the Hindus demanding permission to worship in the “temple” and the Muslims objecting to it.
The court on Tuesday said it would first hear the mosque committee’s contention that filming inside the mosque carried out last week was illegal. The process of hearing in the case will start on Thursday, with the “maintainability” issue coming first. It also ordered the two sides to file affidavits with their objections to the survey report within a week.
The mosque committee has maintained that filming at the mosque violated the 1991 law that prevents the alteration of the character of any place of worship as on August 15, 1947, in the country. It wanted the “maintainability” case to be heard first, which the court has agreed to.
In orders passed on Friday, the Supreme Court had asked the Varanasi court to decide on priority whether the survey at the Gyanvapi mosque and the petition that led to the survey was ‘maintainable’ or not. “I told the court it is a mandate of the Supreme Court that our application saying the case is not maintainable should be heard first. I read out my application and also the Supreme Court order. The opposing counsel said he needed more documents and time to file objections to our application but I said the maintainability must be decided first,” Abhay Nath Yadav, a lawyer for the Mosque committee said.
Early last week, lawyers representing Hindu petitioners had got a part of the mosque sealed claiming that a “Shivling” had been found under the ablution tank of the mosque complex. The claim was disputed by the mosque committee members who said it was part of the water fountain mechanism in the wazookhana reservoir, used by devotees to perform ritual ablutions before offering namaz. The district court had then ordered the sealing of the ‘wazookhana’.
(Manas Dasgupta)
