Gyanvapi Masjid Case: Varanasi Court Dismisses Plea Filed By Masjid Committee

In a major jolt to the Gyanvapi Masjid committee, a Varanasi court on Thursday dismissed an objection to a petition seeking right to worship Shivling claimed to have been found in the mosque complex. The court will now hear the case on December 2. Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee questioned the maintainability of the plea.

The court found the petition filed by advocates of plaintiff Kiran Singh admissible and the Fast-track court Judge Mahendra Kumar Pandey fixed December 2 for taking up the matter, Assistant District Government Counsel Sulabh Prakash said.

On May 24, the plaintiff Kiran Singh, who is a general secretary of the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh, filed the suit and sought a ban on entry of Muslims into the Granvapi complex, handing over the complex to his organisation and permission to offer prayers to the ‘Shivling’.

Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 states that the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, must be maintained. The mosque committee had objected to the plea filed by Kiran Singh and pointed out this act in its argument.

Sulabh Prakash said the lawyers of the Hindu side argued in the court that the Waqf Act does not apply to them

On April 26, a lower court had ordered a videographic survey of the Gyanvapi complex after a group of Hindu women filed a plea seeking permission for the daily worship of the idols of the Hindu deities on the mosque’s outer walls. During the videographic survey, Shivling-like structure emerged which the Masjid Intezamia Committee said it’s a fountain in the wazoo khana (ablution area in the mosque) and not the Shivling.

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