Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque committee's plea against ASI survey tomorrow

Updated on: Aug 3, 2023, 20:26:55 IST

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Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque committee's plea against ASI survey on Friday.

Earlier, the Anjuman Intezamia Mosque Committee had filed a plea before the top court, challenging the Allahabad high court order which rejected its petition against Varanasi district court directive permitting the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to carry out the survey of the Gyanvapi mosque.

The high court's single-judge bench of chief justice Pritinker Diwaker termed the Varanasi district court order for a survey on the disputed premises as ‘just and proper’ and added that no intereference from this court is warranted.

The high court said there is no reason not to believe the ASI's assurance that the survey won't lead to the damage of the structure.

The Hindu plaintiff's counsel Vishnu Shankar Jain said the high court directed that the district court's order on the survey will be effective immediately.

SFA Naqvi, the lawyer of mosque committee, had said,""We have attached photographs of various digging equipment that the ASI (team) was carrying when it reached the mosque premises. It shows that they had intentions of digging the spot."

The chief justice replied though they were carrying equipment, it doesn't show they had an intention to dig, PTI reported.

ASI's additional director Alok Tripathi had clarified that they carried some equipment for removing debris at the site and not for digging.

The mosque 'wazu khana', 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 that a temple existed earlier at the site and was demolished in the 17th century on the order of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

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