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Owaisi's concern over Gyanvapi survey: 'Once reports made public, who knows…'
Owaisi expressed concern over the survey of the Gyanvapi complex, hoping that the Supreme Court's observation on the Places of Worship Act will be respected.
Amid the controversial scientific survey of the Gyanvapi complex housing a mosque, All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday said that the observation of the Supreme Court regarding the Places of Worship Act in the landmark Ayodhya judgment must not be dishonoured.
Owaisi said he hopes incidents of “neither 23rd December nor 6th December” will be repeated once the reports of the survey conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) are made public. The dates mentioned by Owaisi were in reference to the first time when the idol of Ram Lalla (the child deity) is believed to have “appeared” inside the Babri Masjid in 1949 and the demolition of the mosque by Kar Sevaks in 1992.
“Once the #Gyanvapi ASI reports are made public, who knows how things will pan out. One hopes that neither 23rd December nor 6th December will repeat,” the AIMIM president posted on X.
“The observation of the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgement regarding the sanctity of the Places of Worship Act must not be dishonoured. The hope is that the floodgates for a thousand Babris will not be opened,” he added.
A team of ASI is conducting a scientific survey of the Gyanvapi complex to determine if the mosque located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple is built upon a temple. The mosque's 'wazukhana', where a structure claimed by Hindu litigants to be a 'shivling' exists, will not be part of the survey following an earlier Supreme Court order protecting that spot in the complex.
Hindu activists claim a temple existed earlier at the site and was demolished in the 17th century on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay the Allahabad high court order on the survey, an exercise that the Muslim side says will “reopen wounds of the past”. The bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, however, asked the ASI not to carry out any invasive act during the survey.
