Yesterday, the Gyanvpai mosque committee made an unsuccessful attempt to get an urgent hearing in the Supreme Court for their application challenging the Varanasi District Court’s order which allowed Hindus to perform prayers in the southern cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque.
Few hours after the District Court passed the order on January 31 afternoon, the Committee of Management, Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, Varanasi filed an urgent application seeking status quo at the mosque site. The lawyers of the mosque committee approached the residence of a Supreme Court registrar yesterday night seeking an urgent hearing at night itself, raising the apprehension that poojas will be performed inside the mosque during the night. The Registrar replied that he would inform after taking instructions from the Chief Justice of India.
This morning, around 7 AM, the Registrar telephonically conveyed to the mosque committee’s Advocate-on-Record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi the message from the Chief Justice of India that they have to approach the Allahabad High Court. Advocates Nizam Pasha, Rashmi Singh, Ibad Mushtaq, Akansha Rai were also in the legal team of the Gyanvapi mosque committee.
In the application, the mosque committee had contended that the administration was acting in ‘hot haste’ soon after the Varanasi Court’s order to allow the pooja at night itself.
The application argued that these actions, occurring in the middle of the night, aimed to preempt any legal challenge by the mosque managing committee. In a letter to the Supreme Court’s registry explaining the urgency of the situation, the committee, represented by Advocate-on-Record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, wrote –
“There is no reason for the administration to undertake this task in hot haste in the dead of the night as the order passed by the Trial Court had already given them one week to make the necessary arrangements. The obvious reason for such unseemly haste is that the administration in collusion with the plaintiffs is trying to foreclose any attempt by the Mosque Managing Committee to avail of their remedies against the said order by presenting them with a fait accompli.”
The application was moved as an interlocutory application in a pending Special Leave Petition filed by the Committee challenging a 2022 order passed by a Varanasi court allowing the appointment of a Court Commissioner to inspect the mosque.
They argued that the Varanasi Court’s latest order was in violation of a May 2022 interim order passed by the Supreme Court clarifying that the rights of the Muslims toaccess the mosque or to use the Mosque to perform Namaz and religious observances were not impeded.
Last August, the Supreme Court allowed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct the survey of the mosque premises, excluding the ‘wuzukhana’ area where a ‘shivling’ was claimed to have been found. The ASI’s survey aimed to determine if the mosque was built over a pre-existing Hindu temple structure. Permission for this survey was first granted by the district judge in July, and later upheld by the Allahabad High Court in August.
On January 24, the Varanasi court allowed the ASI to make its scientific survey report of the Gyanvapi Mosque public. The court, while disposing of applications from concerned parties seeking access to the report, ruled that all relevant parties should be provided with the findings. The ASI’s report, now made public, states that a large Hindu temple existed before the construction of the Gyanvapi Mosque. It reveals the reuse of parts, including pillars, from the pre-existing temple in the mosque’s construction. The survey uncovered 34 inscriptions, with a significant number on stones from the earlier Hindu temple. The report indicates the discovery of sculptures of Hindu deities and architectural structures buried in one of the cellars. The ASI concludes that the reuse of inscriptions suggests the destruction of earlier structures, with their parts repurposed in constructing or repairing the existing Gyanvapi mosque.
Case Details
Committee of Management, Anjuman Intezamia Masajid Varanasi v. Rakhi Singh & Ors. | Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No(s). 9388 of 2022